Ivan Reitman Quotes

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool.

I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

When you have a performer as talented as Bill Murray or as Harold, that can write as well as they can perform, you can do a final draft on the set if you think of it that way.

I've never read a screenplay in advance. You trust the artist.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.

I get so much energy and I learn so much through collaborating with other people. Ultimately, I think the best music will always be created through collaborations - pooling together skills to create something bigger than any individual. I like to use my own SOPHIE material to present ideas in their most extreme, un-compromised form. I really use those opportunities to express exactly where I'm at in terms of production and writing ideas, as a document of my thoughts and feelings, as well.

I like little collaborations where the other thing happens, where it's half-baked or it's improvised, and let's develop it together. "What do you want to wear? Do you have an idea?" All that's fun to do, and I like that, but it doesn't take anything away.

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

I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.

asically, we got to know other and openly trade stories, and had some time to prep. As far as the 'going too far' thing, the great thing about film art is that you can go too far, and with multiple takes nobody has to see it.

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

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

It's not just about acting. I love film, I'm a director now, I love writing, I love producing, I love having a company that makes films and to be prolific and have a place to put all the ideas that are constantly bubbling up inside of me and that don't let me sleep at night.

I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

I love TV, don't get me wrong. But with film, you're just banging out this one product and you're not waiting on another script. You have your script. It's great, in that way.

Collider is a company that I formed with a movie producer, Alisa Tager, and we just wanted to create a place where writers could come and develop their ideas without a regard to limitations of form.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?

And it was out in the theaters in two weeks. This is not, 'We're going to develop twenty-five and maybe one's going to get made,' so the first three things I wrote got up on the screen and, good, bad or indifferent, I got to see them on their feet.