James Marsh Quotes

I always cooperate to complete a film within the budget. Not a single film of mine has overshot its budget.

The only way to meet the situation [the financial crisis] is spend less money and to run the City of New York within the limits of our resources. Unless you do this, gentlemen, you will have a difficult problem confronting you by the end of this year and the taxpayers of 1922 and the years thereafter will have to pay the price of our present lack of prudence or our unwillingness to economize at the proper time.

Budget drives everything that we do.

In the private sector, you have a budget and you stick to it.

You can't compromise to keep the film in budget.

Economy consists in a due and proper application of the means afforded according to the ability of the employer and the situation chosen; care being taken that the expenditure is prudently conducted.

Can there not be a limit to the fact that really you need to cut your cloth in accordance with what capabilities and finances you have?

I keep my overhead as low as I can.

I started LearnVest with a tiny savings account where I paid designers, technologists, and even bartered... Because I started with paying for things myself with my own savings, it sharpened my focus of how to spend money.

I think we have to be very careful when we toss around terms like 'cut health care costs.' We would do very well to expect a cut in the rate of increase.

As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.

I never go overbudget on my movies.

Never base your budget requests on realistic assumptions, as this could lead to a decrease in your funding.

There must be some flexibility in the budget. You cannot have too much discipline.

Cost reduction and cost control are by their very nature sort of anti-social activities.

For me, the scale of the budget is part of the creative process. 'Swingers' is the movie it is because we made it for exactly the right budget. Had it been made for a higher number, it would not have been as imaginative as we had to make it, given the budget constraints we had.

Sometimes you have to make tough decisions to hold the line on spending.

I try not to shoot unnecessarily or spend on extra expenses that normally happen on a film set - like actors' fees.

What you call austerity is what I might call efficiency.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, "It's a stormy night." Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: "It's a calm night." Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

There is never a time in a company's history when cost control can be relegated to the back burner, but for a startup company, keeping costs low is a vital necessity.

When you're shooting a movie that's not necessarily a huge budget, you have to think about what you can leave out and still make it interesting.

What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'

Again, the American people expect us to do what they are doing. It's tightening the belt, it's learning how to do more with less. That's a reality today, and we've got to do that in order to get the private sector growing.

I realized how quickly you could eat up a lot of time and money if you weren't prepared.