Justin Theroux Quotes

Acting is more creative and liberating than production.

Television offered me the opportunity to do new things; I had written a lot of scripts other than scary movies. I had actually written some romantic comedies and stuff that I really wanted to try my hand at, and nobody would let me do that. Television allowed me to do anything I wanted.

When you make drama you are like Picasso. Drama is whatever you want it to be.

It's not necessarily that satisfying getting monetary success, but sometimes it keeps the door open to make what you want to make.

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

We all need to have a creative outlet - a window, a space - so we don't lose track of ourselves.

There's only a certain amount of works you can make, so you have to make only the ones you really want to make. It's all about trying to be as productive as possible.

When you're working with an object, you can put in almost anything you want, you can make it abstract.

You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

It's rare that I've read a script where I'm like, "Oh, my god, it's hilarious!" All you want is a good skeleton and good characters. Then, you can go, "Okay, I can bring a lot to this. I can improvise and I can create something out of this."

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.

I like to let the actors work the way they want to.

I will not allow anyone to take anything off my palette but if I do then within that, I can be creative.

I want people to see my movies. My talent, my sensibilities are what people want to see in the movies... While I have the talent to make the kind of movies people want to see I want to continue to do that, keep making big pictures and make what I love. I’m really just making the films I want to see. There’s not a strategy.

Decide for yourself what kind of works you want to create... facts, essays, poems - do you want to speak or to sing?

I'm not precious about anything. The effort it took to get something means nothing to me in post. It means nothing to the audience. I'll chop limbs off. I'll put an arm where a leg should be. I'll do anything.

I tried to write a TV series, and then I discovered first of all that I love writing more than anything on this earth, and that you could write exactly as well as you want to.

Being producer you're still going to have to sell somebody who's going to give you the money on the idea and everything like that. But it does give you a little bit more control if you're thinking in that creative process; it gives you more control to tell the story you want to tell rather than sort of just reading a script that somebody else wrote and says, "Yes, please, you can hire me for this job." So it's a little bit more hands-on, a little bit more closer to the heart.

The creative writer uses his life as well as being its victim; he can control, in his work, the self-presentation that in actuality is at the mercy of a thousand accidents.

It's very important that you never depend on money to fulfill your creative vision. If you do that, you're doomed to fail.

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

Writers do the self-censoring before they even get to the studio executive, because they know the film will not run that gauntlet. They, because they want to get their films made, they censor it.

This is one of my big things of creative pursuits. You have your idea you want to do, but then you got to figure out what does this thing want to be? You got to let it lead you a little.

If I crave a frequency in the mid, I'll just drag in a sound and try to mold it into what feels right. It happens very quickly. And if I've been making a piece of music for five hours and it sucks, I'll just throw it away.