Spider-Man is a genuine American myth with a dark, primal power, but it's also got this great superhero, and - hey! - he can fly through the theater at 40 miles an hour. It's got villains, it's got skyscrapers, it's colorful, it's Manhattan. I knew it would be a challenge, but I saw the inherent theatricality in it, and I couldn't resist.

Julie Taymor

Categorized in : Men Dark Superhero

Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia.

Julie Taymor

graduation inspirational funny

When you break into song, it's not about dialogue, it's not about how you would speak in a naturalistic sense-it's about expressing your inner torment or your inner joy.

Julie Taymor

speak joy song

There is incredible power in the arts to inspire and influence.

Julie Taymor

keep-moving-forward inspire art

When I'm working as a director, I might have an idea of my own but I'm also trying to get great ideas out of my actors. Directing is much more psychological - it's a lot like being a general. And you have to be organized. While you're making a film, you have between 2 and 500 people asking you a billion questions.

Julie Taymor

trying people ideas

I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.

Julie Taymor

challenges believe interesting

An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.

Julie Taymor

artist numbers people

When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.

Julie Taymor

kings reality thinking

I call myself a playmaker sometimes - but that's just a word. I don't feel like I have to have a title or a job description.

Julie Taymor

titles sometimes jobs

I want to experience a performance on all levels - I want goose bumps and I want to leave the movie or play arguing about something that's unresolved.

Julie Taymor

levels play bumps

When we were kids, you picked up a little paper and put it on a stick; and when you waved it back and forth, you understood the power of air underneath the wings. In that way, a child begins to understand abstraction, poetry, metaphor, symbolism. You play with the materials you have and use your imagination to make them into something else. That what's so sad about having everything on a little screen - it's not physical and dimensional, and that seems backward.

Julie Taymor

air kids children

I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.

Julie Taymor

dancer design writing

In America, the word art has become like the word adultery. It's this big scarlet letter. When you say you're an artist, people are like, "Ugh."

Julie Taymor

america people art

I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form.

Julie Taymor

japan creating art

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

Julie Taymor

abstract theater film

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

Julie Taymor

three two people

Creativity is a gift, but if you don't know how to use it you might not even know it's there. There's a lot of creativity in the air, but it's meaningless if you're not open to receiving it.

Julie Taymor

receiving creativity air

That's my policy - to be positive, to just hope that something will happen. If you start with all your fears, your receptivity is for the negative.

Julie Taymor

being-positive policy negative

Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.

Julie Taymor

important artist essence

I use cinematic things in a theatrical way on stage, and in film I use theatrical techniques in a cinematic way.

Julie Taymor

technique use way

In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.

Julie Taymor

appreciate artist people