On directing (courtesy of Jonathan Miller)

Since I must use my brutalised right hand as little as possible, I've been reading.  And in doing so came across this:

"Directing is like medicine.  What I liked about medicine and what I like about directing, is this very delicate relationship you have between a group of people working towards some end on the basis of analysing and reproducting human behaviour.  Since you spend a lot of time while training as a doctor watching what human beings do, and trying to diagnose them as a result, that sort of skill pays enormous dividends when you try to reproduce what people naturally do."

I like this quote.  Jonathan Miller can be an inspired director and crosses many boundaries of expectation.  On the whole we don't really expect people to be genuine polymaths.  What I get from this particular quotation is a glorious holistic approach, where everything he does feeds into everything else he does - with the result that it all gets enhanced.

It is a very cybernetic approach - of which my father approved greatly (he being a Professor of Cybernetics).