Gore Verbinski Quotes

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.

I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I'm waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.

The best moments can't be preconceived. I've spent a lot of time in editing rooms, and a scene can be technically perfect, with perfect delivery and facial expression and timing, and you remember all your lines, and it is dead.

Then we tried to come up with ideas for the sketches, and then, when we actually shot the movie, we really just sat down - never previewed the movie - we just really winged it.

With improvisation, I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again.

Adventure is just bad planning.

If you're going to be part of a nationally televised show that airs live and do sketches that haven't even been brainstormed a week earlier, you really can't be afraid to fail.

The slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.

Shooting should not be about delivering something I've prepared; it should be a live process of finding things out. When things happen that you haven't planned, that's when the film comes alive.

The only time I judge an actor on set is if they're not failing; if they get it right all the time, I start to question it. I feel like it's too easy.

I just write what I think is funny, or interesting, and hopefully everything else will take care of itself. There's no strategy to anything.

At heart, I would have to say I'm a pantser. I fully embrace the chaos of letting the unintended happen, on life and on the page.

Every film that I make is an accident.

No, I never planned my life.

Half of art is accident, but there is no accident without free experiment.

You do stuff that gets a reaction and you think 'that's a winner' and then it never sees the light of day. But the thing with improvisation is that 90% of what you come up with won't be used and for good reason. But you keep going for the occasional gem that you might come up with. You do a scene and a lot of the time. We wouldn't cut. So, you come up with something that might be funny and then you go, 'alright, what else'? So, you kind of throw stuff against the wall and see what happens. But you've got to be prepared to make a fool of yourself.

Sometimes you just have to say, “...I don't know what we are doing, let's just go and see what happens.” You have to embrace the experience itself, so that things you didn't intend to happen can make your work more authentic. And you have to hope that it works.

It often feels like a tremendous amount of work is required to get an idea moving forward, like pushing a train uphill. But at a certain point, the thing takes on its own momentum, and takes unexpected turns. So it's that feeling of holding on, rather than pushing it, that is the most exciting thing. It's that need to occasionally bounce off the walls, letting anything happen for any reason, and having nothing to guide you that is the joy.

When young comedians ask me for advice that's the one thing I always say is if they're improvisers I'm like do improv, don't make that your sole thing. And at the end of the day when you do your best work you also just kinda, by definition flush it down the toilet and never do it again.

I cant duplicate my own successes, because part of the creation of that effect is making something happen that you didn't expect

I don't really have a writing process. I don't write at all but, honestly, I feel like it's a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it, I feel like I wrote that. If I go in there and fix it, it's almost like something I wrote.

I generally won't do a role unless I feel like it's in my system somewhere, even if it's just a molecule of it. Like I just felt like I knew it and if I talked about it or discussed it or tried to rehearse it that it would take away the energy from that scene so I went in there and just did it.

I prefer my hesitations, my false paths, my stammering, to a preconceived idea.

Along the way, a lot of filmmakers get rid of things that are messy or don't fit in some ways. To me, I want to work with serendipity and things we happened upon. That's our job, that's what the form demands.