Luke Kirby Quotes

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

It's really fun when a scene doesn't work.

Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

It's a lot of fun to be a part of films that you don't exactly know how they're going to turn out.

The best films come about through experimentation.

It's interesting that instead of having to get tighter and more restricted for a collaboration, strangely enough, from the beginning, we've actually been more confident that we could handle this.

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

With acting, there's a certain amount of independence you have within the framework of the storytelling. When it's done well, it's a collaborative medium.

My favorite thing as a performing artist is to get a pile of raw material from a writer who says, 'Will you help me make this real?' There's nothing like starting from scratch.

I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.

I’m an actor who’s accustomed to bringing a lot of stuff to the table, and you have to be ready because some of them will be accepted and some of them will be rejected. Then you need a generous, free, fearless, loving director like Tarantino to allow you to take those risks.

The moment we live in is a great time to make art. We have different technologies to play with, and we're left with the opportunity to focus on our work.

I love the freedom of writing and then I love the realization of directing. I can't favor one or the other. I enjoy both parts of the process.

I'm a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

Every movie I've ever made has just kind of come together.

If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.

Film is definitely a director's medium. They're responsible for the look and everything, and you're a part of that process as an actor, and you try to contribute to the story. But I think it might sound a little pretentious for me to say I think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as a creative person.

I think once everything is in place, once you've kind of wrapped your head around the story and the character, it's very liberating and you can start doing things like you would do.

It sounds kind of flighty, filmmaker-y, but I believe films are a piece of art. They are meant to be what they're meant to be, and sometimes the artist is informed by the film of what it needs to be.

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

Although arguably, it's my job to dig deep whether I'm improvising or not. It's just their style. That's the way they feel like they get what they want. I mean, they're really good storytellers, so I love being in their hands.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.