Ryuichi Sakamoto Quotes

Inherently, making a movie is tough because there's so much anticipation when it happens - even if everything goes well.

When I first started as an editorial cartoonist, I was terrified on a daily basis. Filling that hole the next day, knowing that tens of thousands of people were going to expect something funny. There is still that pressure, but you kind of learn how to cope with it a little better.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

Having to make a blockbuster every time puts unhealthy pressure on creatives. The pressure on the filmmakers is so intense, I think it stifles the creativity.

It's so nerve-wracking to be on a set. They're the most stressful place in the world, because you're making something permanent, and there are so many people relying on you in a lot of ways.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I tell my wife when she's listening to my songs that the slightest hint of whether she likes it or not puts the pressure on me.

I put out one album one week, and I'm already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.

What you see in my script may not be what's in the film. Sometimes it's a very scary thing, when I have to shoot in the morning and the scene's not good enough, and it's only me there, and there's no signal to even call the others and say, think of a better line.

If you put a blank canvas in front of Matisse and say, 'This has to be a success,' who's going to pick up a paintbrush?

You go to the edit room and see one scene which has come out fantastically, and you feel the film will set records. By evening, you look at the budget figures or something that hasn't worked out and ask yourself - what if this doesn't work?

There was a lot of pressure on me as a filmmaker to raise the bar and do better than before so, you know, I put a lot of thought and energy, that's for sure.

When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing.

When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.

Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.

I always assume that nothing that I make is going to be a success, that everything I make is going to be a failure - not a failure but not some huge box- office success. If something is an artistic success, I'll be happy, but I'll maybe be the only person that's happy.

There are a lot of spikes that can happen when what you're doing starts to get attention or people start to talk about it. They can just kind of really do a number on your reasons for making music.

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?

Making a film, you're in a really dark tunnel and the only kind of illumination is the shared experience you're having with your fellow cast and director.

I work from almost a dangerous place in my mind sometimes.

Criticism is a surreal state, like a good drug gone bad. When it's bad you wish it would stop, and when it's good, you can't get enough.

I do everything I watch, whether it's like a big comic book film that I've done or something very serious and raw.I do have that initial feeling like I'm the worst, this is awful, my work is - I've let everybody down. I definitely have that.

Creativity asks you to enter realms with uncertain outcomes. People want to create a safe life for themselves so they try to live without fear and they end up killing their creativity in the process.

Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.

It's easy for me to say, "Oh yeah, that's the self-saboteur move that most artists pull whenever they're afraid."

The network was fantastic, but you get a lot of anxiety with any production. It was very helpful to have both of us because we could back each other up. As a creator, a director and a filmmaker, you often get assaulted and you lose perspective because you have all of this pressure. It was so nice to call him and say, "What do you think?"