Steve Martin Quotes

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

I truly believe that cinema is a collaborative effort, and as long as I get to tell, and be part of, interesting stories and work with genuine people, I don't see any project as a 'risk.'

I don't think it's a mistake to put every great idea into the first movie, because I've always said there won't be a second movie if you go 'we'll hold back these ideas for another one.

I really admire artists that are willing to take a different approach and a different angle to their shows.

I don't have a drawer full of ideas. I kind of look around and take notes and wonder what could actually be a whole movie. And each time, I think I'm going to do it more commercial this time; I'm going to get a big budget and make it. But I always come up with some small idea.

When you're directing, you see your ideas. You see them created right in front of you on the monitor and the sound stage. You get that experience all over again when you get into the editing room and you start playing with it.

The necessity to conceptualise has to come very early on, and defining a vector of development for that film also at the beginning of the process will allow you much more freedom as you go along.

With directing, you always have three or four things constantly on the go. It's a tough industry and a tough time, particularly if you're doing things a little outside the box or independent features.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.

We started getting the script to different people and we were in the business of trying to fund it so we could get it off and running, and all the characters and sets designed and everything.

Ever since my first film, I had more producers than scripts. And I've realised that a certain project requires a certain kind of producer for it to be made well.

The movies sort of tell you what they want to be as you're writing them.

We encourage our people to build their ideas from scratch, and we give them the resources - and, crucially, the candid feedback - that are required to transform the first wisps of a story into a truly compelling film.

You need a director, a script, and a role to justify a risk.

When you make a film, you never quite know what you're getting into.

The process of starting up a new film is one of looking through a lot of material and trying to find something you really like. And it does sometimes take a minute.

Big ideas don't make them selves known as big. They begin with the little, ridiculous ideas that most people would discard or reject. Every successful picture I've done has really been based on taking a very flimsy, fleeting little idea, grabbing hold of it, and taking it seriously.

You can be cautious or you can be creative, but there’s no such thing as a Cautious Creative.

Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.

Creating is really what I like to do. The best thing in the world is to have an idea in the back of your head and then to make that idea into a movie and have people all over the world enjoy it.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

When you can sit down with a plain sheet of paper in front of you and make some notes, and, little by little, you see it take shape and become a concept for a movie or a TV show. That's a real thrill. You watch it go from notes on a paper to a meeting with writers and directors and actors. I can't think of anything that's more exciting.

Sometimes, you can feel or see how a movie can... how you can do it. Sometimes it's just like seeing, "Can that work? Will people buy that? Can we do that?" And all those checkmarks.

Every time I do a movie, I'm reading the script, or if it's something I have coming up, I'm reading the script, and I just spend hours and hours and days and weeks and months going over the script and just writing a lot of different ideas down, finding a little dialogue or just coming up with ideas for scenes and moments and all that kind of stuff.

When I am kicking around show ideas, or really any idea, usually an image comes to me. I don't really start with a character or a logline like, "What if the electricity turned off?"