Actors and actresses were wordier than directors (304 words versus 240), and women's speeches were lengthier than men's by an average of 44 words.
If the names Apted and Bergman are separated by more than A and B in the film directors pantheon — words like "efficient" and "competent" tend to attach to him more often than "brilliant" or "visionary" — it is this project, begun seven years after "Wild Strawberries," that puts Mr. Apted in his own sphere.
Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Overstock.com and Sirius all describe their directors with words like "valued," "instrumental" and "experienced," and insist that their past performance was irrelevant.
But the "I'm the king of the world!" director (his words on winning the best director Oscar for "Titanic" in 1998) also does not seem overly concerned with pleasing everybody.
Sitting in on our interview, he chips in, amplifying his director's words.
However, several of the stars will have had to take the director's words on trust.
Mentions Charles Friedman, the director, Harold Rome (words and music), Louis Schaffer, labot editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, and manager of the Labor Stage.
The assistant director's words — look for "evidence a student can succeed at Berkeley" — echoed in my ears when I wanted to give a disadvantaged applicant a leg up in the world.
"Aggressive self-challenge," in our director's words, was the mantra for the year; an opportunity to reflect on, and perhaps re-evaluate, the directions of our careers and plunge headlong into subjects that might shake things up.
In a typically beautiful, unstressed nocturnal car shot, the viewer sees, in the director's words, "the furnaces and the factories of Pittsburgh glowing behind James Leer, the one whose future lies before him," while darkness shrouds the driver, Grady Tripp.
