Dave McCary Quotes

I have a partner, Danny Strong; he's an incredible writer and, really, my backbone. So when we don't see eye to eye, it's painful.

Tim and Fritz Lang I loved working with. Not Hitchcock so much. There was no communication.

It's very difficult sometimes having bands, you know, when all the members aren't on the same page.

If you think that something worked and your directing partner doesn't think so, then maybe you have to re-think what you were doing.

The great thing about movies is that they're collaborative. And the worst thing is that they're collaborative.

I've worked on shows where the actors don't talk to each other, and if they want to talk to each other, they talk through the director. What kind of existence is this? If I have to spend 14 hours a day with somebody, we're in a relationship. We'd better talk it out.

The producer, in effect, has to work as a translator. You form a very tight relationship with the director and writer from the beginning, and then you are constantly communicating to the various people that begin to come into the process, as you are trying to manage to hold on to a vision that needs to be communicated over a long period of time.

I've worked alongside some very good directors and some not so good.

Working with other people, it's hard to get them to make it sound like what you have in mind.

When it comes to filmmaking, we have to deal with ego, anger, and a lot more; barring all these, how the team works towards the outcome matters.

I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.

Most bands don't work out. A small unit democracy is very, very difficult.

And 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' was a very transitional film for me in that I was one of the producers and you know, came up with the idea with the writer and the producer, as well. But, it was a very collaborative event. You know, I really love working in that way.

If the auto plants in Detroit would just sit around the table and say, 'What do we gotta do to make this thing work?' Instead of, 'I want this and I want that.' They might make it.

A lot of times, directors don't know how to speak to actors, or writers don't know how to communicate.

I always have a ping-pong table in the studio. If you're with an artist and you notice the situation is going south a little bit, it's like, 'You wanna play ping-pong or foosball?' Or, 'You wanna go grab somethin' to eat?' And then you just like talk to them and relax them and get them comfortable and get yourself comfortable.

Well, I think that a lot of times when you're working on a film, there aren't really opportunities to get to know all the people you have to work with.

The hardest part about directing is getting everyone on the same page.

I think there are shows that are long-running and successful, where some or all of the cast members hate each other, but I think it's a lot easier to have an environment where everyone feels secure and supported to do the best work possible.

You never know when you read a script how it's going to turn out because so much depends on the collaboration between people. If I'd been in some of the movies I turned down, maybe they wouldn't have been a success.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can't get creative and find alternate solutions if they don't listen to each other. There's a lot of arguing and justifying.

You want to mix acting styles correctly. People approach the work in different ways. You want to make sure no one wants to kill each other because the approach is different.

A huge amount of negotiations and diplomacy has nothing to do with bartering or arguing but is just trying to get everyone [doing the negotiating] on the same page. It takes yours, days, even weeks sometimes.

It's great, getting the scripts and working with somebody like Sam Esmail, who is such a great leader.

A big part of the job of being a showrunner is, in my way of thinking, being a good communicator because there's really no other way to have hope for getting what you want, at the end of the day.