Julie Taymor Gets Blunt! Nine Very Candid Quotes from the Tony Winner on The Lion King, Spider-Man and Taking Risks

Julie Taymor stopped by Charlie Rose on February 8 for a frank interview about her career. Taymor addressed controversy and rumors surrounding Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark, reminisced about The Lion King and examined about the ups and downs of taking risks. We applaud the Tony-winning director for opening up. Below are nine Taymor quotes from the half-hour interview.

On being labeled a hard-ass: “I’m not tougher or demanding than any other director who has a vision and has a team that wants to do it. I like to do things that haven’t been done before. I like to take chances. I don’t particularly like to repeat myself.”

On dealing with Internet: “It’s much tougher now with the blogging. It’s much tougher to create something that’s going to be original, that’s going to be experimental, and I’ve been through that a couple of times, but I’m here.”

On influencing Tom Hooper: “We had done that. I know that there’s this thing that [Les Miserables] is the first time. No, Across the Universe was done. 90% of it was sung live on location. In fact, I talked to Tom Hooper about that a couple years ago.”

On how she became The Lion queen: “I think Disney felt even though I was from the avant-garde, and I had my own artistic style and aesthetic, they felt that if they married these two things together, maybe they’d come up with something new.”

On early Lion King doubts: “One of the things about Lion King is there was a lot of times where people weren’t sure. There was doubt. Of course we had naysayers, we were doing something experimental then...but we stuck together.”

On Spider-Man pride: “I had a great time working on Spider-Man...I’m still the director of what you see. It doesn’t matter what they say. I spent a lot of time with my comrades. You don’t change a show in three weeks. It’s still a great show. I’m still proud of my people, my collaborators and what we did on it.”

On Spider-Man’s troubled preview period: “We had the same amount of time [as Lion King previews], but it was all in one city, and that means we were under the microscope of New York…If you don’t want to come to previews, don’t come. No one actually ever saw—I mean it never got finished.”

On the circus of Spider-Man: “When you are creating something that wasn’t a normal Broadway musical and we always said [Spider-Man] wasn’t. It was always circus…rock ‘n’ roll, drama. The only thing you can compare it to is Cirque du Soleil…they cost upward of 200 million, 250 million dollars and they have soft openings for a year because you’re using technology that’s never been done before. We were really experimenting.”

On getting sacked from Spider-Man: “I knew exactly what was missing…I would spend every day fixing and making it better…I worked my ass off. I was surprised when I was told that I was let go. I had never been warned…But it actually wasn’t the word 'fired,' it was 'take a vacation. Come back in three weeks.' I felt we should have opened, even though I felt we should still keep working to finish the piece.”