Boots Riley Quotes

Early on, I knew I had ideas, but I wasn't sure when it was appropriate to bring them to the table, and I was so intimidated by these titans that I was working for. But it started around the time of 'Tron,' when I was really excited by the creative process and the prep that went into that. I spoke up often at those writing sessions.

I am a very big fan of Brian Eno, of his work as an artist and making his music, and as a producer. In some ways, I have looked to his career as a model for my own.

You're collaborating with people you don't even know, when you're making a film. You're collaborating with people you've never seen. So, the collaborative process is very, very different than when you're collaborating on a record with the musicians you've worked with all your life.

The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes.

What the work of art looks like isn't too important. It has to look like something if it has a physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned.

We always feel there are 3 parts to the song. The most important part is the reason it should exist. Our process usually consists of me sitting at the piano & Bob hovering over it. We throw ideas out...I start to play something...he'll hum something to make it better. He'll throw a line to me, I'll twist it to make it better and we scramble around like that for sometimes hours and days, 'til we both agree we've got something to show! That's how it works!

The work is different in the sense that I haven't had to travel round the world raising money, or work from the genesis of the project. But the collaboration feels clear always, it's sort of my drug, I'm in it for the conversation. The conversation's the most important part of it.

It's impossible having five, six, seven people in a room being creative together and not fight, because you want to fight. It's the only way creativity works, if you all put your ideas in.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

I think working with artists is incredibly important for everybody in the world, but also, it is a way of seeing the world differently.

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

Communicating with musicians is really interesting because everyone has their quirks and their strengths and their weaknesses.

The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

I think it's important to just be in your subconscious mind - at least when you're starting an idea.

If artists do have ideas, they're often not great.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

My ideas are not developed before I actually do the pieces.

Like every beginner, I have thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

I absolutely adore the alchemy of a bit of an idea.

We talked a lot with the musician. And for now there are few options, and I give him few weeks to come and surprise me with something. I don't want to start and say, okay here is what I want. Because maybe he has an idea that is better than mine.

It's funny that some ideas start with a little "What if?" and then suddenly you're spending a million dollars to shoot the scene and hoping that it works.

Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.