Tom Junod Quotes

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

I really have to feel a sense of freedom in my storytelling.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I'm 100 percent in control of my artistry, music, and finances.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

I want to be able to go wherever I want to go, do whatever I want to do. I guard the material and the filmmaker.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

I have the most fun writing and directing. And I always choose myself as the lead actor.

Success is freedom - scripts coming your way and getting to choose the stories you want to tell.

My favorite thing is being able to follow my inspiration, and the freedom of being a writer is hard to beat.

All the artists out there, I ask you and beg you: Take over your ship. It's your career. It's your life.

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.

I've been wanting to produce for some time because I want to have more creative control over the things that I do and not be victim to the whims of other people's desires.

I would never tell someone else how to use their platform, because I think I'm much more comfortable allowing the work that I do to speak for itself.

I've gone places where they've told me what I need to do, what I need to say, who I need to be, what moves I need to perform. And at Impact I get to just be me. I have creative control to be me and do what I want.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

It wasn't slung together by a producer and a publisher. We decided we were going to take hold of our music and let it evolve organically.

I can make any film I want to make.

Can't nobody make you make any music that you don't wanna make. Remember that.

As a writer you're holding a dog. You let the dog run about. But you finally can pull him back. Finally, I'm in control. But the great excitement is to see what happens if you let the whole thing go. And the dog or the character really runs about, bites everyone in sight, jumps up trees, falls into lakes, gets wet, and you let that happen. That's the excitement of writing plays-to allow the thing to be free but still hold the final leash.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.