Whit Stillman Quotes

Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.

I think comics do need permission to fail. I think comics do need permission to go up and try stuff.

When my films don't work it's usually because I tried some very experimental idea. I tried new ideas and they just didn't work, as opposed to trying to do something conventional and having it be so conventional nobody wanted to see it.

It was actually the enormous risks I took with my pictures, skating right up to the edge of non-acceptance, that paid off so handsomely.

I need to go where I'm not comfortable. I think that's the artist's job.

I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things.

I guess the big thing to say about 'Pig Farm' is that none of us knows if it works, and we're going in blind. It's in the tradition of 'Urinetown,' kind of - but that's a pretty small tradition. It's possible that it can fail.

Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.

There's real peril in trying to repeat yourself, and apply rules that applied to something else to a new project.

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

If you're not pushing your own technique to its own limits with the risk that it might just crumble at any moment, then you're not really doing your job.

A true artist, in my mind, is willing to fail sometimes, because if you're not brave enough to say yes and follow your gut, it's never going to be good.

I free-form it, rock n' roll it. I'm a creature of risk, so I don't know how I'm going to explore a Beethoven symphony until I'm doing it.

I feel every day that everything I create - everything I do - I want it to be a risk. I think when you take the big swings - and I've done plenty of big swings that I was told were never going to work - those are always the things that break through.

I ask all my actors to do two things: I ask them to fail for me, and I ask them to surprise me.

Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.'

I think it's important for History to keep experimenting with their shows. The more documentary-driven, the returning series, are the bottom of the iceberg under the ocean that keeps it moving, and then it's important to take those swings and see if we can ignite a spark with new audiences.

I've taken a number of creative leaps, and some of them worked, and some of them didn't, but I don't regret any of them because you can't possibly get to the ones that work without the ones that don't.

The only way I'm comfortable with a new album is if I'm taking a new risk.

Defying genre conventions is instantly a risky move.

I learnt that an actor should be willing to take risks, try new things and unlearn stuff.

In art, you CAN crash your plane and walk away from it

That's exactly what I'm driving at. 'Basterds' was interesting because it was, in a way, unfamiliar. I thought well, OK. Let's leave the comfort zone and just risk it. Why not? Because, exactly as you said, in a way, by taking that risk, I make up a little bit for my ignorance in the subject, or rather, the genre.

If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.