Ice Cube Quotes

You always worry about films when you hear about them making decisions after announcements are made.

When you make a movie, it's just a huge bureaucracy because movies cost so much money. Millions of people get involved, and pretty soon the creative idea gets tramped on and watered down or filtered through a huge system.

I wanted to just be a filmmaker, and I thought I wanted to do all the aspects, and it seemed like as a producer was the best way to do it, because I could have... You never have control on a movie, but you have as much control as you can.

If I was going to do anything, I'd be a producer, only because I'd like to have a say in what gets made and what doesn't.

Films are all about decisions, and that's what I love.

When you make a movie, you can only make the movie that you would want to see.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

I design all of the costumes for my movies, actually.

In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

I'd like to make movies as a producer and a director.

I find it quite difficult on studio films because there are so many different executives and things like that that you have to go through, so very often getting that definitive opinion is actually quite difficult.

The best thing about being a film producer is I get to spend 99 per cent of my time behind the scenes.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.

Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents.

I have a couple ideas that I'm banging on for a film. It's strange, you make a movie and, all of a sudden, your agents are calling you and saying, "Hey, I know these guys with some money who are looking to finance something." You're like, "Oh, god, now I've gotta come up with something really amazing."

If it's something I feel I can do alright, I like being in those, and some that I think Rob Schneider and David Spade would be funnier at than me, I tell them to do it. I don't have any clue how we decide. There's this thing, this "Click", actually, one of my friends called me up, my partner told me about this idea that Steve Koren had. Steve Koren, by the way, the guy who wrote it with Mark O'Keefe, Steve Koren I've known since I was 22. He was a page at Saturday Night Live.

Studios just sometimes make decisions on their own that you're always flabbergasted by. It just happens that way for whatever reason - not even pointing fingers, it just is.

If you're producing a movie you're involved in every aspect of the movie and that can be daunting and then going and doing a movie where you're just an actor for hire, and you can kind of sit back and giggle where you can see somebody sitting over there wasting time and wasting money.

It's always exciting to be a part of the development and creative process, and I hope to continue to do it. I feel like, especially in the comedic world, it's how things have to be done. You have to be a part of the motivating factor of getting the movie made. It's so hard.

It's part of the film-making business and also part of the creative process - putting all the pieces together to make a movie, so that they all line up. Sometimes it looks like you have a lot of projects lined up, but some of them are in different stages.

When you're the guy behind the camera, you're aware of the reasons for the compromises or the changes that get made. As an actor, you go and do your thing, and someone else down the line then does all the math and goes, "We can't include that thing where he's pretending to be dumb and needling those people, because it takes a minute and a half, and it ruins the next scene. It doesn't make sense." If you're directing, you're the one doing that.

Bringing any movie together is a minor miracle.

There are enough bad films coming out of this town already without the process being more democratized. I'm a guy who loves democracy. I'm all for democratizing any process, but I think there is a price to pay for that.

When you're dealing with Hollywood people, it creates a tight, tense atmosphere through the whole thing. And I don't like to work in that kind of atmosphere. I like to make my movies in a kind of relaxed atmosphere.