Kim Jee-woon Quotes

No dance has ever turned out the way I thought it would, because I trust enough that I can start something with some ideas and then it takes itself somewhere.

You've gotta leave enough space for your actors to bring stuff to the table and whatever the weather's doing that day or what the light's like. Things can shift, and you have to be malleable. Every day is a different feeling and a change.

I like to leave a little room to innovate and change things around while I'm working.

When you work with an actor and then you discover new things that are better, I think you gotta be free to be able to go with the new things that you're finding. I think that's very important. I have a strong idea when I go to shoot a movie but I also love to discover things when I'm on set as well.

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas.

The reason I don't have a plan is because if I have a plan I'm limited to today's options.

I have to be more universal than my projects, but no less innovative.

I just go with the flow, so any style can be in my music - that makes it exciting.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

I'm open to anything. I would love to play someone completely off the wall.

I'm not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what's going to happen next. It doesn't matter if it's been a good year or a bad year: next year, there's no telling what it will be like.

The whole thing about the way I approach work is to be surprised by an opportunity when it comes up. So I have no idea what I will be doing next, and I kind of like that.

I do not see myself, I never make plans, I never set goals, and I never do that kind of stuff; I don't like to futurize, I barely know what I will do tomorrow, and because there is a working plan here, I've never futurized because life always surprises me with things even better.

You can't always go by the book, even in comedy.

The hardest thing is that I never do anything the same way twice, and when I'm on the air, I'm very unscripted, and I'm very comfortable in that role. So me being scripted is not a comfortable place for me.

I don't come in with any preconceived ideas, and although I will have done some preparation, I can go which way the director wants.

I see my practice as picture making. Whatever is available, I use.

I'm not like J.K. Rowling, where I know there's going to be this number of seasons, and I know exactly what's going to happen. I would be so bored if that was the case. There would be no journey. There would be nothing to discover.

Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'

You have to be very flexible and understand as a director, especially as a writer/director, that you cannot hang onto stuff really hard. You have to be ready to accept those happy accidents and to anticipate that they are going to happen and capitalize on them.

What I learned in 'Sons' is that I would come in with a blueprint of a season and how it would go, and I realized that the looser my grip was, the better it became because the story found itself. Things happened as I wanted them to in terms of the bigger mile markers, but the fun part was I never knew how we would get there.

I may find myself changing my notions about what I want to do right in the middle of a film. And on days when I'm feeling merry, I shoot merry scenes, and on gloomy days, I shoot gloomy ones.