Clark Gregg Quotes

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

No matter where I am working, I cannot make a film without 100% creative control and final cut. If there is such a guarantee, I can work anywhere.

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

As an actress you can participate, you can be a co-author, help the director. But I always wanted to be able to make the big decisions.

I've had some success at writing and directing, and I like it. It's infinitely more creative than just acting, and I have things I want to say and do.

It's the director's job to piece together my performance, his interpretation of my takes, each take, and string them together and make a statement. I'm red paint on a canvas for a painter.

You can take your life into your own hands in terms of directing. There are ways for you to finance yourself and to write and make a film.

We have to show support for artists who are trying to own things for themselves.

As a filmmaker, one tends to want to evolve evermore towards a place of independence.

I love having the control over the end result and not having to go through some committee to get something approved. I feel sorry for people, like actors, because unless you're Woody Allen or Mel Gibson, they don't have much say in the decisions that affect their work.

When I get to make a movie, I really try to make it on my own terms.

Let film-makers take a call about what films they want to do.

I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.

I don't get why radio shows allow artists to do shows without creative control, without any art direction at all. Instead of that, I get their press guys, their camera guys to be my backdrop of my show.

You learn early as an actor that creating your own material is the only way to have any control.

I became tired of submitting my art to a panel of corporate strategists who decide if it meets their standard of what gets into stores or not. It was quite simple for me: they act like judge and jury of my art, and that is unacceptable. I wanted to give it right to the public.

You have total control of it, and when you're an actor, you're subject to production design and costumes and directors and studio choices and producer choices, but when you're writing it, you're creating your own little world in your head, peopled with your little characters. No one is in there monkeying with it, at least not at first - though they will. With this and the other projects I'm working on, it'll have to be given away, and it'll have to be someone else's property.

My best business decision was to be independent as a musician and artist. My worst was compromising on certain aspects of a deal for the sake of other members of my group when I shouldn't have, because I was right in the end.