Ben Schwartz Quotes

The films that I've done before were original stories most of the time, I did two adaptations before this, but they were mostly original stories where I had complete freedom to evolve in the direction I wanted.

I always figure there are novels and short stories, and in those, I'm God. No one tells me what to do. I don't have to lose a page, or cut anything, it's just mine. Then there are other things where you're up against realities.

It's really just a freedom that we have with Amazon to push ourselves creatively. It allowed me to say, you know, okay this is going to be a little half-hour film here to start the season.

The strength of film is its accessibility and immediacy. But the strength of books is that freedom to really depict anything you want because people are going to be reading it in private. So, I'm always trying to write with the immediacy and the constant motion of film but I'm also trying to write with the complete freedom of subject matter that books have.

You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them.

Lots of TV is kind of becoming almost the new form for adult storytelling and cinema, but still with some independent films you still have those kind of jewels that people are able to make and it takes a lot of effort.

There's such a freedom about being an artist... You're not accountable - you're this renegade thing.

I'm a songwriter. My voice just serves what I'm writing about. So to let all that go, I mean, bring the sensibilities of it actually to the song choices, but to just be the interpreter was incredibly liberating and really fun.

I feel like the world is dominated by such a small group of human beings. There are so many different kinds of people that aren't represented, that don't have characters who look like them. And that's one of the reasons why I intend on being a director, because I want to actually tell some of these stories. I also think that we place such intense emphasis on award shows when they're not necessarily the best reflection of how good the work is. We need to realize that art and creation are so much bigger than an award or any measure of accomplishment.

Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.

I tend to get a little quirkier and crazier with my lyrics and come from a different angle when I'm writing for myself.

I studied English Literature. I wasn’t a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well.

There's a lovely freedom of will when you approach a character that no one has really come across before, because it is your own interpretation.

You have to remain strong. That's the kind of filmmaker I want to encourage. Orson Welles was the one who said, you know, you can learn anything you need to know about filmmaking- that's camera, sound, celluloid, video at this point- in four hours. It has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with it... It has to do with what you want to say. If you feel you have something to say, you'll find that way to get it said, on film, and not let anyone or anything chip away at that or tarnish it, because it's something special and precious.

I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.

One of the reasons I really love low budget filmmaking is you don't have to think about that as much. You can have more fun and be more playful and be freer creatively.

I have a ways to go as a novelist. But what's great is, well, I frankly enjoyed the solitude. And I enjoyed being able to tell characters what to say and do without negotiating with an actor.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

You always want to make the best film you can. If anything I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell and it's actually been really nice.

I kind of like the idea of taking a concept and going all the way with it, even if it's not completely plausible. It's something that I like about making movies. You have a concept that maybe would not work in real life, but you can make it work in the world you're creating.

The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful...

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!