Val Kilmer Quotes

No matter what you're doing, if you're trying to make a movie, you need to be working with people that are really good and who make you better.

As a filmmaker, I'm a collaborator first.

I've learned how to trust someone else's ideas with mine.

As much as I love movies, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I know how to make one.

I don't think you can be a director without a kind of sense of competitiveness.

I just want to work with people, so I always try to find a way to collaborate in the best way for the music.

I think when you make a movie, one of your main focuses as a director is to inspire everyone else to give their best. Like manipulation.

That is an amazing experience, because we with director Christian Petzold know whenever we criticize each other, it's for the best, and you don't find that very often, that you trust each other so much. That's a special thing.

I just enjoy collaborating. I think there is always something to be learned, and I think that one could never collaborate enough - that would be impossible. So I am always excited and honored when someone wants to work with me.

I think it's incumbent upon me to try to be smart and make good choices and work with good people and work my ass off when I'm working with good people and I have to let everyone have their opinion afterwards. But this is what happens. You make a movie or you're on a show and then you have this experience and everyone tells you what you did. They tell you what you did. That's allowed. That's the experience of being human and subjectivity. That's it. We can only do what we'll do, and I can only do the best I can do.

Criticizing to destroy is easy, thinking in order to build is much more difficult to achieve

It's true that I don't think I'd be a good director. If I were a director, I'd try to hire the best people I could and then leave them alone. I don't know much about cameras or lighting, so I'd make sure that I had a really good cameraman who understood lenses and lighting, and I say to him, "This is the scene we have to shoot and this is what I think it should be, you go do it." Same with actors. But really, very good directors who know everything do basically the same thing. They hire you and then they leave you alone.

I think one thing that is extremely important is to connect with people in order to be successful and bring the people in so that they become your partners.

I think directing is part play, part work, not just all work, because I think you always have to play. I think that's ultimately why I got into making movies, is because I love to play.

I think one of the worst things people can do is try and fight the people they've agreed to work with.

...the Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.

I learn a lot as a director from acting in other people's films and just in general. I want to try and be as involved in the art of filmmaking as possible. I feel that the only way to really do that is to take on as many roles as possible, whether it be as an actor, an editor, a director, a cinematographer. Basically, I like to help and be involved, so anything anybody asks me to do, my first reaction is to say "Yes."

A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.

With a film you go with the script that's already written. And I've never thought of a project, a film that would come from my own desire. I don't think I can do it. I need someone else's desire to be able to do something. With a record, it is completely different, it's a collaboration with another artist, but I'm willing to go into intimate places with no masks on.

To make progress we have to build a multi-stakeholder process, harnessing the appropriate energies.

I think the mark of a good director is that they surround themselves with good people.

When you work on a graphic novel or a film with people you've been together through a lot and you've exposed your secrets and weaker sides to each other.

Why not work with your friends? It's working with people you know, and you share the same sensibility.

We can not be naive and think we can go it alone.

We are collaborators in creation.