Cliff Martinez Quotes

I'm worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer's creation - not an artist's creation.

It's really empowering when, as an artist, you can visualize something and then have the final product turn out the way you wanted it to.

I'd love more production houses to encourage artists to create what they want and not just churn things out.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

I don't want the world to give me anything for my books except money enough to save me from the temptation to write only for money.

The way that I make films is that I sit down and I think, "How much money could I get with less consequences?" And that's how I start. I'd rather have less money and total autonomy than more money and start having to answer to things, because then I'm not being true and the money men are not being true.

I do not want my new works to be generated in a market or audience of any kind.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry.

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.

But as long as you're creating the art you want to create, if people start liking you, you shouldn't have to apologize. You want your stuff to be heard by as many people as possible.

I hope I'm in a position to make stuff that I really want to make as opposed to stuff that I just have to make for money reasons, or to sustain a certain marquee value.

You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?

I don't make records that way, where I'm trying to please the marketplace or anything. Not because I have anything against that, it's just never been a part of my aesthetic, even when I was with the Pixies.

The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

If I read the right script, if that script needs $5 million, if that script needs $50 million, I don't care. If I read a project that's beautiful, that I really want to make, whatever it needs, it needs.

You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

I am an artist, and I will always be working. But a film should match my personality and should be primarily based on a woman for me to go forward with it.