I designed a theater magazine that was full of plays and essays about the theater, and then I worked at a theater school. By osmosis or something, I was learning from reading plays and not being analytical about them, but when I would read them, the joy in me was mostly from imagining them in my head and visualizing them.

James Lapine

Work Learning Design

We live in an era of reinvention: Madonna and everybody desperately trying to change their persona.

James Lapine

Change Yin Very

There are certain images that always haunt me.

James Lapine

Age Ways Way

Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you're seeing them.

James Lapine

Life Your You

Sometimes good news is hard to absorb.

James Lapine

Time Good Times

Meryl Streep's really smart, and she's a film animal, and she knows that.

James Lapine

Art Tree T

Some of the things I've done in my life, I've done to make money because I had to make money... and some things I did just because they were on my mind and they were of interest to me... some of the little plays I wrote.

James Lapine

Money Life Wrote

Fairy tales, which teach a moral lesson, are about ourselves. Myth deals with forces greater than ourselves.

James Lapine

Great Wit Which

That's the thing about dreams - they're ineffable. If you can get to the bottom of it, it's not a dream.

James Lapine

Dreams You Tom

I'm never so into the three-act movie thing. I know that's the form that people talk about, but it seems to me, in the movie, you just have to keep charging forward. You couldn't start over again like you do after an intermission. You just had to keep the plot moving forward.

James Lapine

War Art You

When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.

James Lapine

Time Change You

I am thrilled to receive the Sondheim Award from the wonderful Signature Theatre. I have already received the invaluable gift of over twenty-five years of collaboration and friendship with Steve. Now I get to have his award, too!

James Lapine

War Nature Friendship

I'm drawn to dreams.

James Lapine

Dreams T Raw

I'm a very laid-back person.

James Lapine

Very Son Person

I like to keep a low profile.

James Lapine

T Profile Pro

The music is the emotional substance of the show; the book just sets it up. Nobody goes to a musical to hear the book. That's the way it works.

James Lapine

Work Music Works

I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.

James Lapine

Love Write T

When you're young, you envision happiness in such an idealized way.

James Lapine

Happiness Young You

As you get older, you realize happiness involves a lot of problems.

James Lapine

Happiness You T

I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.

James Lapine

Yin Watch Used

I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.

James Lapine

Love Visual Too

I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.

James Lapine

The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.

James Lapine

I am an off-Broadway, nonprofit kind of guy.

James Lapine

You can't be theoretical when you're building a musical.

James Lapine

I was a youngish man entering fatherhood when we wrote 'Woods,' a patchwork of classic fairy tales with an original tale sewn in. I had dedicated my libretto to my baby daughter.

James Lapine

Something I like to do is watch someone else do their thing.

James Lapine

Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, 'Ohhh, it's magic.' Nothing's magic. A thing doesn't jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren't good.

James Lapine

The nice thing about the theatre is you can always change it. With a movie, once it's there, you're stuck with it.

James Lapine

Most musicals are real crowd pleasers.

James Lapine

I just don't really think of career. I've never been driven by career.

James Lapine

I designed a theater magazine that was full of plays and essays about the theater, and then I worked at a theater school. By osmosis or something, I was learning from reading plays and not being analytical about them, but when I would read them, the joy in me was mostly from imagining them in my head and visualizing them.

James Lapine

I think visually... so, even when I'm writing a play, I'm envisioning it.

James Lapine

In most audience-participation shows, the participant is so clearly not a part of what's going on that it's the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes it funny.

James Lapine

I don't do movie junket-y things, because I don't really do movies that much.

James Lapine

I've ended up working with Disney a lot, which is kind of peculiar. In theater, I've done a couple of projects with them and written a couple movies and whatnot.

James Lapine

I have nothing to hide.

James Lapine

I like the stage challenges of having somebody literally falling apart before your very eyes.

James Lapine

If you're like me and nosy, you're always eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

James Lapine

It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I've always been a sucker for that.

James Lapine

I'm a hippie child of the '60s. What drives me crazy about mass media entertainment is that it's so often devoid of any ideas.

James Lapine

When you grow up, you don't realize that your parents are any different than anybody else's. And their behavior - you have nothing to compare it to. So that is what normal is, even if it's abnormal.

James Lapine

I'd like to just say that there's nothing darker than 'Old Yeller' and 'Bambi' and some of the early Disney stuff.

James Lapine

I really enjoyed writing the adaptation of 'Into The Woods.' I thought it was wonderful to not be the director, frankly. I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

James Lapine

I did 'Impromptu,' which was a thrill and a horror all at once - my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.

James Lapine