Chris Zylka Quotes

But I'm blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me.

Jeph Loeb has been great to work with, and he's been really supportive of some really bizarre ideas I've had.

I just can't say enough about the actors having faith and trust in the writers and the writers having faith and trust in the actors.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins.

I believe the better I can write on my own, the better I can be of service in a co-write. The big thing with a co-write is trust, and it's not so much what you get the first time you sit down with that writer. It's the relationship that you build that you're in. So you can trust throwing out all your ideas and how strong you think they might be.

That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them.

I've written with people who aren't like me, then I've written with people who totally get it. It's like a blind date, and you never know what's going to happen. But it's really cool because they learn from you, and you learn a little bit from them. And sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't.

I like working with writer-directors because you can solve problems right there.

And 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' was a very transitional film for me in that I was one of the producers and you know, came up with the idea with the writer and the producer, as well. But, it was a very collaborative event. You know, I really love working in that way.

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.

Steven and I have worked together a lot and I'm far ahead of the curve than most people in knowing what he wants, but he knows far more than I know about what's important for the story. So, most of the changes he will make will involve story changes.

This was all very new to me and I did not want to ruin his film! So we worked hard on that basis of confidence that is needed to collaborate comfortably.

The key to this collaboration - which we undertook after much deliberation - was to stretch creatively. New characters, new locales, new form (the novella).

Working with the Kinks, there always seemed to be some kind of automatic process at work. Ray and I had this telepathy happening for a long time, where one of us always knew what the other could do with something.

One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.

I'm definitely one of those actresses who comes to a set knowing how I want to do a scene, and I definitely love input from my directors and my writers. I know that there's some actors who like to be left alone, they like to be very independent, but I actually really enjoy the teamwork.

What goes on between the actor and director is sacred.

I think most co-directors and co-writers just hold hands.

Basically, I see myself as a maker of things who knows how to support other makers of things. At the end of the day, I am just committed to helping put good stories out into the world in whatever role is appropriate and needed for that particular project.

I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

I like to come to the set with very strong ideas and strong opinions about how to do things. And I like also dealing with somebody who's like that.

I see my actors as my collaborators.