Gary Ross Quotes

No movie has ever got enough time. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, and it doesn't matter how much money you've not got. You never finish on time. You're always up against it and you're always working up until the end.

When you're shooting super-low-budget - we had 20 days to shoot 'Diary,' and a little over $2 - time is money.

When you're working with a script and you have three pages for that day, you have to shoot that. It can become sort of like a prison, because by the time you've shot what you need to shoot, you don't really have time to think or shoot anything else.

But it was not possible to do this movie, in this matter of time, without a solid rehearsal period.

You can write a little and can draw a little, but there's necessarily a limitation on both in a comic strip, since it appears in such a tiny space.

I did this film for less money than it costs to stay in this hotel. We shot it in 20 days. We couldn't screw up takes for fun because we didn't have enough film.

Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct 'Catching Fire.' As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make, because of the fixed and tight production schedule.

Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time.

You only have a week to do a show. I mean, there's only so deep you can dig in that week.

When I'm shooting, it averages out at a 16-hour day. You have two deadlines everyday - lunch and wrap.

To shoot a movie that takes place in three decades in 30 days is a lot on the hair and make-up team.

When you don't have time, especially for a director, you cannot do exactly what you want to do. You have to cut your dream to fit in the movie you're doing.

It doesn't matter how big or small your film is: you still don't have enough money. You don't have enough time to shoot it.

It's hard to prep a movie in five days and shoot it in five days and cut it in barely any time. You don't get quite enough time to make the thing, let alone tell the story.

He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day will often bring to his task attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce.

I wanted to spend all my time writing poetry. But when I had children I couldn't do that anymore.

You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.

When people start writing songs for award shows, there's a very limited palette you can use. You end up not sounding like you. You end up sounding like somebody else. You end up getting what the record company thinks they can market.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, "It's a stormy night." Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: "It's a calm night." Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

I think the reason I like making movies sometimes more than doing TV is that you have one task, you only have a certain amount of time to do it, and then it is done. And I really like focusing in that way.

I'm sort of a pressure writer. If somebody says, "Stan, write something," and I have to have it by tomorrow morning, I'll just sit down and I'll write it. It always seems to come to me. But I'm better doing a rushed job because if it isn't something that's due quickly, I won't work on it until it becomes almost an emergency and then I'll do it.

I suddenly realized that we were on borrowed time, that time is always borrowed, and that the lending agency exacts its premium precisely when we are least prepared to pay and need to borrow more.

'We have to be back in three hours,' Ronan said. 'I just fed Chainsaw but she'll need it again.' 'This,' Gansey replied, 'is precisely why I didn't want to have a baby with you.'

So many wonderful books to write, and not enough hours in the day. An embarrassment of riches.

A big thing for me is trusting the director, so I don't need to watch playback. I feel like the director is gonna tell me whether it's right or not.