John Lasseter Quotes

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

I need to find a way of retaining creative control.

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.

Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought.

I have to speak for myself. As far as videos go - casting, the artwork, everything - I'm completely hands-on. You have to be if you want your points across.

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.

That's the fun part about being a director. You get to say, 'Oh, now that I'm in charge, I can try and cast whoever I want.' They can always say no, but that's okay.

Is Walt turning over in his grave? A man named Joe Roth runs Disney right now-he gave me the go-ahead and total freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.

The only folk I can judge are people like Woody Allen who I think is a genius, largely because I think he has beaten the system. He has his own company, and his films are all his own ideas. It's his direction, and so it comes out the way he imagined it.

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

I love having the control over the end result and not having to go through some committee to get something approved. I feel sorry for people, like actors, because unless you're Woody Allen or Mel Gibson, they don't have much say in the decisions that affect their work.

I always say that I'm a filmmaker, not a factory. I don't have to churn out films every six months.

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

As an actor, most of the time, you only have so much say in how, what and where things go. As a director, you really get to paint a bigger picture. You have many more brushes to use.

Any time you turn off and let someone else make any artistic decision for you, you make a mistake.

We've always decided ourselves what we wanted to put out as our singles and that sort of things.

Everything in my career is my decision - every picture, every outfit. You get one chance at this, and I never saw myself as being a puppet.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

A director is a choreographer, both politically and creatively.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

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

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

Tim also has enough confidence so that it always looks like a Tim Burton film, but it really is collaborative. You're allowed to do it your way but of course he's always going to choose his way.

I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do anything. It's nice not have to get decisions out of three, sometimes four people, which can be like pulling teeth. So the amount of control that I have over what I'm doing is better for me as a solo artist.