Raphael Bob-Waksberg Quotes

In television, the writer-creator-showrunner is embraced as the creative mind.

In film producing, there is an inherent tension between the director, the money and the producer, and that's what keeps it flowing and honest and accountable.

I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.

I feel that recording a song already compromises the magical music one can create in the mind, so the fewer people watering down this process the better.

But only if I believe that my directing talents will improve the material I'd be working on. I want to make sure I don't sacrifice beautiful material on the altar of my direction.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, 'Well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct.'

I love producing shows. And so when you're on a show where other people are making decisions you don't necessarily agree with it, after a while you start to feel like a passenger.

I did a terrible television pilot that was so badly written and dumb that it became a turning point for me and I decided that I would never accept a job just because I needed the money.

When I did 'Stardust,' I was fighting the studio for things I believed were right.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.

In my opinion, some of the hip-hop records that come out, people are willing to compromise. I'm not.

I've talked about this a lot, but 'The Witch' took four years to finance because there were certain compromises I wouldn't make.

You have to fight to get your show not only on the air but then to keep it what it is and make sure that it doesn't get manipulated into something else.

I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.

I hear a lot of, "We want to make a movie with you." Then "No, we don't want to make this one. We want to make that other movie with you." I don't really get that and it's very frustrating. It angers me. Because my movies are my movies.

I'm sure a lot of the hardcore folks are going to be up in arms and I'm really looking forward to getting into that discussion with them. I don't believe I'm compromising on my gameplay ideals at all. [But] any artist who doesn't want his or her work in front of the largest audience possible is nuts.

They wanted to 'radiofy' what I was doing. I was also in a position where I was compromised. I was much younger and maybe it is because I am Irish but there was a guilt factor when the record company pays you a lot of money, you feel obliged.

I think no matter what you do, a certain amount of people are going to call you a sellout, somehow, you know. If I ever start trying to make a living on it.

It's very important that you never depend on money to fulfill your creative vision. If you do that, you're doomed to fail.

There's a point where you find yourself tiptoeing as an artist, and then you know that you're in the wrong place.

Nowadays, [young musicians] are so quick to be like, "OK, fine, I'll take the cheque, or I'll get the stamp from XYZ, and I'm expanding my brand," rather than thinking, "I'm part of this space over here, and in order for it to grow, you can't have it assimilated by this bigger bubble or corporate brand."

I found myself in network always trying to play catch up because once things get going there's no time to fix this and that. And also the writing, it was more inclined to be by committee in network which drowns out the purity and the voice of the show.

I'm very patient and always willing to try things but I have some resistance as well because I have my own vision. I have resistance sometimes because I see a director who's freaking out and wants to have control and they sometimes anticipate about what I'm going to be doing or not.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for up-sized art and more of it... Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast. Bigness is not all bad. There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. But the bigness has also led to a narrowing of sensibilities, by making it very hard for any but the glitziest works to get traction.

In the theater, which is a sort of jungle, one does have to be a little bit careful. One mustn't be so rigid or egotistical to think that every comma is sacrosanct. But at the same time there is the danger of losing control and finding that somebody else has opened a play and not you.