Pat Metheny Quotes

If you don't trust everybody on stage with you, then you're in trouble.

My partner after Fred Freeman was Jerry Belson. And Jerry Belson, after I was doing so well writing situation comedy, said, this is not good enough. We got to create our own shows. I said, but we're very happy doing this. No, no, no, you got to get your own show. So he made me - and he and I created our own shows. And we actually - everything we created failed. "Hey, Landlord" was our first show - 99th in the ratings. But imagine this - it's a great reflection on the years.

I've had the pleasure and the great luck to work with some incredible actors over the years and you have to observe and learn and take something from it and try and become better yourself.

Collaboration sometimes causes conflict, and sometimes it's easy, but the bringing together of great minds only adds.

I've had production offers with artists I really admire, and oftentimes that doesn't work out. Sometimes it does, but... For instance I was asked if I wanted to do a Talking Heads album back in the late '70s, early '80s, and I was already working on a different project and didn't have time, so I never got the opportunity to work with them.

I want collaboration, but if they don't have a plan or their vision isn't clear, it's nerve-wracking. So, someone that's very sure of the vision is what you want, most of all.

They didn't dictate to me as to what kind of music that they wanted me to play or what tunes, what musicians that I was going to use. They let me do my thing. That's one reason I stayed there for twenty-eight years.

Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.

I feel like I've had a strong relationship with Robert [Kraft] and his family since I was here in 1996 and I think it's gotten stronger every year that I've been here with the Patriots. The more things we do together, talk about together, work together on, the closer we become and the more we rely on each other. I feel like our relationship is very close and continues to grow closer every year as we grow older together.

As an actor, I've just gotten insanely lucky. I quite like being surrounded by lots of different talented people lots of different times a year.

If you've worked together with somebody very well, leave-taking is very difficult. But we are all politicians. We all know that democracy lives off change. So, in the United States of America, the Constitution has very clear stipulations on this. It's a tough rule. Eight years and that's it, out goes the president and a new one comes in.

Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.

I worked with Sidney Lumet years ago, and we had a long rehearsal process, and he would tape out the entire set on the stage, so I stole that from him.

I got very lucky to work with Wes Craven, very early on in my career, and continued to work with Wes for almost 19 years. I learned so much from him, and about his sense of story and his sense of horror, and that was great to be a part of.

I was up day and night with Lincoln for years. I couldn't have picked a better companion.

I believe you can never stop growing and learning and I've been very fortunate to have been working since I was 10 or 11-years-old. I have learned so much throughout the years working with amazing directors and great actors as well. This was really a huge step for me because it's very different from anything that I've done before but I think the biggest difference here is that the cast we were surrounded by in this movie was unbelievable.

I actually met one of my business partners [Neal Dodson] at the Governor's School summer program, so we've known each other since we were 15 and 16 years old, and we both ended up at Carnegie Mellon together. He started working for a producer out of school after a few years, and then we started the company together.

Nira Park, who is my longtime producer and friend - I've know her since we did Spaced, the TV show - she gave me this script the last day of filming The World's End. She said, "Take a look at this. It's filming in London next year, and you might like to look at Jack." I trust Nira implicitly.

I thought of collaborating with other people which still might happen at this point. It might not. I was just trying to break the cycle because I had gotten to a point where I was definitely sure that I was on the wrong track after about 16 years.

I can tell you that my contribution based on my interpretation of the book is unchanged. The other things, in terms of doing the research and following the trail of it, were probably pretty similar to what I would have done then. I think that what makes me celebrate that it took the 10 years is the various other people and contributors that I ended up having on board.

I was kind of a little disappointed when they started building a competition between Marty (Martin Scorsese) and me. I have the greatest respect for him and all the films he's done over the years.

I worked with John Maybury on The Jacket and I think he's an extraordinary film-maker. I read the first drafts of this piece when I was working on The Jacket, and we'd so fallen in love with him that we thought he was the only person that should direct this! We wrote poems for him, we sent him champagne and cakes. Four years later he finally read it.

So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John Du Prez. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.

When Tetro came out, I met with Warren Beatty for the first time. I had, like, a four-and-a-half-hour lunch with him, and then over the next five years continued to meet with him and go to his house.

When you're working with friends, unless the material is right, our friendship could end.