Steve Buscemi Quotes

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

I love working with actors who will just go, 'Oh O.K., let's try it and see where it goes,' and 'Let's see what we can discover.'

We've never gone into the studio with prepared material... we never have.

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.

I think the best directors provide you with a safe environment where they can instill you with confidence and allow you to try things out and not feel like you're failing or that you're doing it wrong.

I always want to do something I haven't done before and get to work with other actors, writers, or directors that I want to work with.

We must improvise, and we must experiment, and we must do things that might go wrong, and everything we bring - the people and the equipment - must serve us in that goal.

Improv training allows you to get out of your head a little bit and take more risks, which is something I would like to continue to improve upon.

I really like to experiment. That's the only way I can work. It's instinctive.

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.

For me, I believe comedy's about taking risks, taking chances, working in a safe environment where you're comfortable making a fool of yourself. It's so critical, especially in comedy, to just have all those right pieces in place.

I like to be sort of grounded with Fish. But, at the same time, I think probably what's unique about us is the way other dynamics happen, where I'll play off Trey for awhile. When we start playing a jam, I don't usually know what's going to happen, I don't have a plan.

As an actor, you want a director who makes you feel comfortable in a place that you can really create and try a lot of different things.

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.

I love improv. 'Crazy, Stupid, Love,' the script was really great, but the directors were open to letting you try different things. And that felt like a muscle I hadn't exercised in a really long time.

It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and making it seem like everything is limitless. That usually helps a lot.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

It's really fun when a scene doesn't work.

With independent films, you again get to work with new directors and experiment too.

The only way I'm comfortable with a new album is if I'm taking a new risk.

Especially with Fantomas, i'm just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can't get away with.

I've worked with directors who have done it too much, particularly in television, you know, 'okay we got it, let's move on, next setup.' 'Well what about, we could maybe investigate?' 'Mmm… no, let's go.'

Every day, I'm trying to push the boundaries creatively, and sometimes it does push the boundary too far, and that's what I had to learn.

Working with Sukumar was amazing. He's someone who trusts his actors and allows them to experiment with dialogues and scenes. When you're working with him, you learn a lot subconsciously, and that helped me in discovering the actor within.

I certainly like the actor to have as much lee-way as possible. In the same way that director Bong was generous enough to let me create, you have to do that for actors, as well, and let them use the tools they have, and part of that is their own brains and their own words.