Joey Soloway Quotes

As an actor you can always blame the director or writer for negative feedback. But as a writer, you're the reason why everyone's in the room.

As a writer, as a creator, I'm giving you my experiences. But just take what I give you. You ain't got to pry beyond that.

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

I think - more than anything, I think I'd really like to start producing and be in charge of the stuff that I want to see in the world and the stuff that interests me.

You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?

I don't necessarily love all the collaborations that I've done; the more I work with other people, the more I realize that I want to work with myself.

It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'

I prefer to believe it's my responsibility if a film of mine works or doesn't work.

I write all of my material. It's all me.

I admire actresses who are willing to jettison the easy route toward exposure and commercial success as an actor in favor or a slow burn, choosing projects carefully, and building an artistic practice over time that feels specific to who they are as artists.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really.

I always say I want creative control. A lot of people don't think about that. And that's what every artist should think of - being creative and not just a puppet.

I can only control what I can, which is what I'm able to do as an artist.

When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.

I guess when you're holding the creative reins, you can be across everything, and it's more authentic. You can control it.

I was always going to direct. I wasn't going to hand my characters over to anyone else.

The reason I don't want to say anything about it is it has a strange power to take over the conversation. Just like it's doing with us. I was asked to participate in a documentary about Richard Prince, and be the voice of someone who was appropriated, and I declined. The reason I did is I don't want it to be the subject of the discussion of my work.

Become the director, producer, choreographer of your own story

When I started, I was 23 years old directing my own music videos; I'm co-producing on my album; I'm hands-on with everything. I'm more than just a pretty boy: I'm an artist. I'm not saying I'm a hip-hop music artist, I'm an artiste.

There's this message to comedians in particular, that you shouldn't write it, and a television writer should write it. And that's a prevailing conventional wisdom that I think is really wrong. That's not to say that television writers aren't great, but I think that the belief that some comedy writer's going to be able to capture your voice is naive.

The writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just closing the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else.

You have total control of it, and when you're an actor, you're subject to production design and costumes and directors and studio choices and producer choices, but when you're writing it, you're creating your own little world in your head, peopled with your little characters. No one is in there monkeying with it, at least not at first - though they will. With this and the other projects I'm working on, it'll have to be given away, and it'll have to be someone else's property.