Marshall Curry Quotes

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

Try really, really hard not to judge your own work too harshly.

Honestly speaking, I don't like my films. When I watch them, I see a lot of scope for improvement, so if I were to see any of my films, like 'Dhoom,' I might say... 'It would have been better if...' or 'had it been...' and this is all about evolving.

I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. How do I know, but I think I'm quite good at saying, "That's no good. That's no good. That's it. That's it. That's good." And I'm with the editor who goes, "No, I think you're wrong. That's not your best." There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it.

When you're done shooting, the movie that you're going to release when you're done shooting is as bad as it will ever be. And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I'm really hard on myself and on the movie.

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

I do my work as an actor, but another part of my work goes to the piece as a whole. I can be fairly detached looking at my work and be brutal on myself.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

Very often adverse criticism goes to craft, and that sounds an alarm to which attention should be paid.

What condemnation could possibly be more harsh than one’s own, when self-pretense is no longer possible?

We have to keep in practice like musicians. Besides, there are still potentialities to be realized in color film. To us, it's just like bringing up a child. You don't stop after you've had it.

When I'm writing, I'm locking myself in a room. I'm the worst critic in the world. I write something and then I beat myself up. I'm like "Vin, you're retarded, that makes no sense."

Maybe I was a bit harsh on some people. But I was harshest on myself, really.

Possibly the whole creative whirlwind of any musician's life is based on garnering and developing and absorbing more and more experience.

"The Diagnosis" had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes. I would do something and let it sit for three months... just brood about and decide I needed to slightly change something here or there. Or one character wasn't quite right. But I think everybody goes through this.

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me.

Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally I think, "Oh, for God's sake, shut up."

One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.

When I am making music, I am growing at the same time, ain't I?

If I was to see any of my films now I would feel, oh god you know it's awful I could do that so much better now. Look at all the terrible things I did and all the mistakes and all the compromises and all the blunders I made, and it would be such a terrible experience for me to see them. So it's better that I put it out and move on to the next thing and make it history as quickly as possible.

These days, I find I'm applying a little more patience to my process. If I look back on my work, I can see those songs I bailed on could have been better, that had those great two verses and then I kind of coasted from there. These days, if a song is giving me trouble, I put it aside and pick it up later, and keep doing that, for a year if I have to, until it takes shape.

I'm a sponge, the more I absorb, the more I am able to articulate my vision, as artists do, like Picasso. I'm an artist in that light. I went from being an artist to an artiste.

Never ask people about your work.

Sometimes I catch myself doing something that I've already done. The more I've done, the more that's likely to happen. Then I just throw it away. I wait until I've got the right way of getting a thing done, which means my songwriting proceeds at a very slow pace. But it's the only way I can really work.

I can look at my early work and see what a pained struggle it was to draw what I was drawing. I was trying so hard to get this specific look that was in my head, and always falling short.