Anna Akana Quotes

The way I look at a solo project is, I create what I want with whoever I want.

I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

Writing for myself and writing for another artist are two very different experiences. When I handle both the story and the art, I have full control. I can endlessly tweak every word and every line.

I couldn't be an artist who was told what to do, what to be, what to sing.

As a designer you have to just do whatever you want to do. The second I came to terms with that, it transformed my work.

Making a movie like 'Felony' is hard work because you're really putting your own ideas on the screen. You can't hide behind some other person's script; you're saying, 'This is my brain, and I want you to know what I think'.'

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

I've gotten to a point where I wouldn't direct someone else's material. It would only be something totally original.

They say I'm insane because I need to have so much creative control. They say I'm unmanageable, but I'm not. I just know what I like. I'm obsessed with it. If you can't control it, that's like having somebody else paint your pictures. How could you do that? I never could.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.

I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

I learned what I really love is making films, not the film business. I want to be on the set, meeting with writers, I want that freedom. I love it now.

I just make the movies I want to see. I've always been that way.

I'm lucky enough to exist in 2018, where I have a record label that's like, 'Write whatever you want to write.' I don't have to hide anything.

As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.

It really was total heaven to be a writer. As a model or actor you are employed on someone's whim. As a writer, you are in control.

The writing of 'The Ladykillers' was fun. But once it goes out of your hands it's not fun, 'especially for someone who is used to being hands-on like me.

The only place where any artist feels liberated is doing independent music. I have had great experience making music for The Dewarists and Coke Studio. No actor, producer or label is telling me what to do with my music. I'm the boss. It is my life, my expression.

Photography is a pursuit that allows you to be very hands-on with what you show people of either yourself or the art you want to make, and acting is kind of the exact opposite. You do have a modicum of creative freedom as an actor, but you're still very much a cipher for other people's art.

I learned that you have to say that you're a filmmaker. You're not a screenwriter; you're not a director for hire. You've got to take charge. You're a filmmaker, and you're going to make a film.