Robert Schwentke Quotes

A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

Vince or Brad or Benicio would say, Maybe we should try this, and Guy was open to changes.

Sometimes you don't want to get married too much to a lot of rehearsing, I feel, when it comes to film, because there's so many technicalities. So if I'm in my head, I've gotten settled on something, I'm gonna have to change it if I get there and something was set that's completely different.

I film quite a bit of footage, then edit. Changes before your eyes, things you can do and things you can't. My attitude is always 'let it keep rolling.'

You never know how things are going to turn out in a movie. You can imagine a scene one way, and it can turn out to be completely the polar opposite of what you expected. You just have to roll with the punches.

For me, the movie's always evolving as I'm doing it. I throw things in as we shoot, and I take things out as we go. I want to create a whole life and then select the pieces that best sort of describe it later, you know? So there's a lot of wastage when I make a film.

I'm very unpredictable, but at the end of the day, I'm working. Sometimes things change in my life. It's like, 'Hold up - that ain't feel good. That felt good.' And that's how I look at anything I do.

I always roll with the way things are, so as soon as one decision happens, you just realign and move on and make another decision.

There are times when a film turns out differently from how it was narrated. But I don't look at it as a bad thing.

I like to leave things open, and even when I write out the story ahead of time, it always changes. I don't think I would finish anything if I was sticking to a plan that was very rigid.

Every morning, we choose between milk or tea or coffee. Usually, I know what I like, but I don't rule out changing my idea sometimes. The editing process is one of the most important parts in everyday life. The same is with my work: mistakes are part of the decision-making process.

Whenever I try to map things out they inevitably change. Which doesn't mean I don't map them out — I just try to embrace the better ideas that come along as my fingers are flying around the keyboard mid-draft!

All my other movies have the same process. Same approach. Same amount of changes. Everything. Things being made up on the fly. Changing things around. Firing and recasting. Constantly, constantly, in chronological sequence, not really knowing how this is going to end up. That is the only dogmatic approach I take towards everything.

I'm quite spontaneous in my decisions often. Your career is kind of what happens whilst you're busy developing other screenplays, and so it came out of the blue.

If you over plan New Year's Eve it's going to be a disaster so you have to be alive to changes.

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change.

Goals happen to be restrictive to me. Goals can cause me to maybe miss out or make a wrong decision on an opportunity that pops up.

I'm not old school, like, "Aw, man, I gotta do my music like I did in '98." I just go with the flow. I don't try to change anything.

I don't like to have everything all worked out in my head because there's always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.

Once you are shooting a movie, even if it's your own script, you have to let it go at a certain point. That's true for every film. It breaks up into phases where the thing that you have in front of you is the thing you have to address, and you can't worry about what you imagined a scene was going to like and that it came out differently, because that's what you have to make work.

I'm always open. I try not to have a closed mind. In fact the only reason why I'm able to continue to make films since 1986 is I have been adaptable. If I weren't flexible I sure wouldn't be making films this many years as I've been doing it. I've been making a film a year almost since 1986 and that's hard. That ain't easy.

There are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. To find them, look for tiny interesting choices. And remember that you are always making up the future as you go.

I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen.

If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.