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KAZUMI TAKAGI | Executive director, Mainichi Broadcasting System | |
In the case ... of the videocassette industry ... there is not a country in the world with prior experience. This is a field in which Japan must carve out its own precedents. This is the first case in which Japan must gauge the development in such a manner. My conviction is that this is an industry in which Japan will set the precedents. | • First Vidca Conference, Cannes, 19-23 April 1971 | |
Sir STEPHEN TALLENTS | Sir Stephen George Tallents 1884-1958; Secretary of the Empire Marketing Board 1926-1933; Public Relations Officer, General Post Office 1933-1935; BBC Controller of Public Relations 1935-40, Overseas Services, 1940-41 |
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1 'A foot of film is worth a dollar of trade,' say the Americans, who, enjoying special advantages, have turned every cinema in the world into the equivalent of an American consulate. | • The Projection of Britain, 1932 | |
2 We must master the art of national projection and must set ourselves to throw a fitting presentation of England upon the world’s screen. | • The Projection of Britain, 1932 | |
3 Any research that might be undertaken should be so controlled as to secure that it never developed from a servant into a master, to the detriment of the essential qualities of good broadcasting—a responsible but sensitive outlook and a readiness to experiment. | • Memorandum to the BBC General Advisory Council, January 1936 See also Robert Silvey |
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A J P TAYLOR | Alan John Percival Taylor 1906-1990; British historian |
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The vaunted independence of the BBC was secure so long as it was not exercised. | • English History 1914-1945, Oxford University Press, 1965 | |
IAN TAYLOR | 1945- ; British Minister for Science and Technology | |
Digital TV will bring an era of high value, interactive multimedia services, bringing substantial benefits to the UK economy. Consumers will be able to call down special-interest programmes, take out electronic season tickets to follow their home football team, conduct home shopping, even alter camera angles to track a favourite star. | • December 1996 | |
NORMAN TEBBIT | Baron Tebbitt of Chingford 1931- ; British Films Minister, July 1979-January 1981 |
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The Chancellor [of the Exchequer] will have more to do with the success or failure of the film industry in the future than I will as the minister responsible. | • May 1980 | |
ALFRED Lord TENNYSON | 1850-1896; British Poet Laureate | |
Thunderless lightnings striking under sea. | • of submarine telephone cables | |
TOM TERRISS | 1882-1964; British-born actor/writer/director; appeared in the first drama televised by NBC in May 1938 | |
In the seven years that I have put in in the making of motion pictures I have played and watched the game from every angle. I cannot exclaim ' Eureka!’ (which is Greek for ' I know it all’), but this I can say—the trouble with the cinema is formula. There are set formulas for writing titles, for stories, formulas for entries and exits, formulas for beginnings and endings. There are not enough bold, creative spirits who will continually smash all rules and formulas. In the rapid development of the mechanical side of picture-making in America the artistic side is being lost sight of. There are beautiful 'effects,' but few ideas. Story-writers, directors, title-writers and actors are tied hand and foot by the purely mechanical and business brains that will eventually make the American-made picture the most perfect mechanically in the world, but the least creative, the least intellectual and the most tiresome. The crying need of this great art is big independent writers and epic directors who can work untrammelled. This real wonder of the modern world is to-day almost wholly controlled by men not to the cinema born. ... During my seven years in studios I have watched the manufacture of pictures from the day the story was bought until its production on Broadway. I have seen the story passed on to the scenario (or continuity) writer, who put it into 480 scenes, describing in his script the minutest action of every character, planting the fades and the close-ups with a complete set of titles. I have seen the script changed by the supervising director, passed on to the director, who shot it, scene by scene, from the manuscript ; the building of each ‘set ' by the carpenters from the blue prints from the art department, the continual re-editing and cutting of the film after twenty runs in the raw in the projection room, the re-titling, the making of insets (letters, documents, photographs, etc.), the making of title cards in the laboratory, and the final run in the theatre of the studio for the ‘critics' from the main office—who just as often pronounce the whole thing 'rot' as they signify with an enigmatic shake of the head ‘It'll pass!' There is only one question after these months of labour—not is the picture 'good' or 'bad'. 'true' or 'false'—but 'will it get over?' And the question is perfectly legitimate, for the cinema is neither educational nor philanthropic. It is as purely a commercial enterprise as selling soap. ... Before I went into the cinema I had heard a great deal about the 'fascination', the 'magic' of the game, and the way it 'gets you'. ... I have never met a person who voluntarily left the cinema for another business. But when I first entered the studio the fascination and the magic were nowhere apparent. I couldn't find cinema land, the modern democratic fourth dimension. On the great stages, where sometimes ten scenes were being shot at once, there seemed to be a series of dumb shows going on, interrupted by the hammers of carpenters, the blare of jazz bands, the gong of the director, or his megaphone. ... You may have noted that men in the various departments of the cinema never talk about anything else. I soon caught the fire. It is because everything that happens becomes a picture. Every face you meet is judged by camera standards. The whole planet becomes a motion-picture studio. All events are poses. I found stories in stories, and shots in everything. A great many actors and actresses in the cinema portray characters whose fictional names they do not know, and quite often they have not even read the story of the play they are helping to film. Motion-pictures, the eighth art, are not yet twenty years old, and yet they are always being sneered at because they are not on a 'higher level'. What art in the history of the world has progressed so fast? ... No part in the history of humanity can compare for one moment with the achievements of the motion picture art in twenty years. No art that is so essentially and necessarily democratic as the motion-picture art has done more for the imagination, the intelligence, the education and the entertainment of mankind. The seven arts existed hundreds and thousands of years before they gave birth to an Æschylus, a Molière, a Shakespeare, a Rembrandt, a Beethoven, a Mordkin, a Rodin, a Cervantes, an Acropolis. And there are those who demand of the eighth art—which is an outgrowth and a blending of all the arts—these miracles in twenty years! |
• Letter to actress Jessie Millward. Quoted in Jessie Millward (in collaboration with J B Booth): Myself and Others. London: Hutchinson, 1923 Mikhail Mordkin (1880-1944) was a ballet dancer who settled in the US in 1924 |
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MARGARET THATCHER | Baroness Thatcher 1925- ; British Prime Minister, 1979-1991 |
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1 Theres a great industry in other peoples pleasure. We must expect a lot more of our jobs will come from the service industriesfrom the Macdonalds and Wimpys, which employ a lot of people, and from the kind of Disneyland they are starting at Corby. Leisure is a big industry. | • quoted in Daily Mirror under the heading Maggies Mickie [sic] Mouse job plans, 26 August 1983; taken from an interview in The Director, August 1983. Corby never had a Disneyland but Britain had lots of MacJobs after Thatcher | |
2 Here is Mr Murdoch, who gives us Sky News, the only unbiased news in the UK. | • introducing the arriving Murdoch to a departing visitor at 10 Downing Street, 29 October 1990. Murdoch was visiting the prime minister to arrange a merger of his failing Sky Television with the even more failing British Satellite Broadcasting. Quoted in The Observer, 24 August 2003 See also Michael Grade, Rupert Murdoch Thatcher's role in satellite television |
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3 I am only too painfully aware that I am responsible for the legislation. | • hand-written note to Bruce Gyngell, head of TV-am (and reputedly her favourite broadcaster) after TV-am lost its licence in 1992 | |
HELMUT THOMA | 1939- ; Managing director, RTL, Germany 1991-1995 | |
It's like going into a restaurant, having the chef point to the ingredients and saying: 'Here they are, now cook the meal yourself.' Is that what audiences want? TV audiences want to stay passive. | • On interactive media; 1995 | |
Lord ROY THOMSON of Fleet | 1894-1977; Canadian-born newspaper and media proprietor | |
It's just like having a licence to print your own money. | • On the early effects of being granted a UK licence for Scottish Television, part of the ITV network, c1958. cit Russell Braddon: Roy Thomson of Fleet Street | |
HENRY DAVID THOREAU | 1817-1862; American writer | |
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. | • Walden, 1854 | |
Dame SYBIL THORNDIKE | 1882-1976; British actress | |
The talkie tears away the last shreds of phantasy and only leaves cut and dried fact. | • Picturegoer, November 1929 | |
RANDALL TOBIAS | 1942- ; Vice Chairman, AT&T 1986-1993 | |
If we had similar progress in automotive technology [to that in computerisation], today you could buy a Lexus for about $2. It would travel at the speed of sound and go about 600 miles on a thimble of gas. | • cit. John Naisbitt: Global Paradox | |
LEO TOLSTOY | Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy 1828-1910; Russian writer and reformer |
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1 Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen | • What Is Art?, 1898 | |
2 You will see that this little clicking contraption with the revolving handle will make a revolution in our life—in the life of writers. ... The films! They are wonderful! Drr! and a scene is ready! Drr! and we have another! We have the sea, the coast, the city, the palace... | • interview, 1908. D W Griffith adapted Resurrection in 1909. Four films in 1911, including one of 100 mins, began a long international list of adaptations. |
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Sir HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE | 1853-1917; British actor | |
Sirs, I have tested your machine. It adds a new terror to life and makes death a long-felt want. | • response to request for a gramophone testimonial | |
FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT | 1932-1984; French film director, occasional actor | |
1 Jean-Luc Godard n'est pas seul à filmer comme il respire, mais c'est lui qui respire le mieux. Il est rapide comme Rosselini, malicieux comme Sacha Guitry, musical comme Orson Welles, simple comme Pagnol, blessé comme Nicholas Ray, efficace comme Hitchcock, profond, profond, profond comme Ingmar Bergman et insolent comme personne. ... Jean-Luc Godard deviendra-t-il plus populaire que le Pape, donc juste un peu moins que les Beatles? C'est possible. ... Plus prosaïquement, je puis dire enfin que je suis devenu coproducteur du treizième film de Jean-Luc Godard parce que j'ai observé que les gens qui ont investi dans ses douze précédents chefs-d'uvres sont tous devenus riches. [Jean-Luc Godard isn't the only one who films the way he beathes, but he breathes the best. Quick like Rosselini, wicked like Sacha Guitry, musical like Orson Welles, simple like Pagnol, wounded like Nicholas Ray, efficiently like Hitchcock, deep, deep, deep like Ingmar Bergman and insolent like no one else. ... Could Jean-Luc Godard become more popular than the Pope, even just slightly less than the Beatles? It's possible. ... More prosaically I can say in conclusion that I became the co-producer of Jean-Luc Godard's 13th film because I noticed that the people who invested in his 12 previous masterpieces have all become rich.] |
• L'Avant-Scène (70), May 1967, about 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle | |
2 Je tourne autour de la question qui me tourmente depuis trente ans: le cinéma est-il plus important que la vie? [I keep going round the question that has troubled me for 30 years: is the cinema more important than life?] |
source unknown | |
3 The state plays the role of oppressor. It treats the cinema like it treats the people—despising the young and the old, and exploiting the rest. | May 1968, during 'les évenements', which included a film-makers' demonstration at the Cannes Film Festival | |
4 I would not like to see a film for the first time on video or the television. One first sees a film in the cinema. Cinema and videoit is effectively the difference between a book one reads and a book one consults. For me as a cinéphile, video overturns my life. Take Lubitch's Design for Living as an example. Before, if it was on somewhere, I used to go, knowing I would have to wait maybe two years before being able to see it again. Now I may see it three times in the same week. To have a film on video gives me a much more intimate knowledge of it. As a cinéphile, I am a video fan. |
• used as a blurb for a series of French video releases of classic movies, 1992 | |
5 All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They’re obliged to overstate their own importance. | • letter, 8 January 1981 | |
DALTON TRUMBO | 1905-1976 ; US screenwriter, one of the blacklisted and imprisoned Hollywood Ten | |
1 The Court of Appeals holds that speech can be controlled whenever it relates to an important and vital matter or is expressed through an effective medium of communication. | • about Mr Justice Clark's judgment [qv], in The Time of the Toad, 1949 | |
2 Even though it is customary in intellectual circles to deplore motion pictures as an art, it would be a fatal mistake to underestimate them as an influence. They constitute perhaps the most important medium for the communication of ideas in the world today. The Committee on Un-American Activities recognizes them as such. The Circuit Court of Appeals recognizes them as such. The Legion of Decency and the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Legion and the National Chamber of Commerce recognize them as such. Unless intellectuals quickly come to the same conclusion and act as vigorously as their enemies, there is an excellent chance that the American motion picture monopoly, abasing itself as the German monopoly did, will succeed in its assigned task of preparing the minds of its audiences for the violence and brutality and perverted morality which is fascism. | • The Time of the Toad, 1949 | |
DOUGLAS TRUMBULL | 1942- ; US film director and technologist | |
1 The people running the movie business are really deal-makers, packagers, agents who are afraid of technology. | • interview, Variety, 5 August 1991 | |
2 People will pay a dollar a minute for a [theme park] ride, which is equivalent to people paying $180 to see a feature film. Theme parks have been amazing cash machines for Universal and Disney. | • interview, Variety, 5 August 1991 | |
MICHAEL TUCHNER | 1934- ; German-born British film director | |
This place [Hollywood] is tricky because it operates with optimism. If you get a yes it means maybe; if you get a maybe Im afraid it tends to mean no; and if you get a no you might as well pack up and go home. | • March 1982 | |
TED TURNER | 1938- ; US television enterpreneur | |
I dont really like television, if you want to know the honest truth. I think the more time you spend in conversation and playing bridge and playing golf and chatting with your children or reading a good book the better off you are. But since we have television with usand since not everyones going to read a book or converse with their childrenI might as well be in it. | • MacTaggart Lecture, Edinburgh Television Festival, September 1982 | |
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Page updated 30 November 2009
Compilation and notes © David Fisher