Jonathan Levine Quotes

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

The thing about producing is that the pressure is off of being in front of the camera, and being critiqued and judged in that way, but there are other pressures producing.

The biggest thing I have realized was that you have to choose your collaborators very carefully, and that not everybody can like you. The process of filmmaking is so difficult, there's no point in doing it unless you can do it the way you want.

Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought.

I've already felt that I want to direct. Being an executive producer is like the best job in the world because you make all these executive decisions and then you leave the money to other people. You don't have to be on set and counting beans.

That's the fun part about being a director. You get to say, 'Oh, now that I'm in charge, I can try and cast whoever I want.' They can always say no, but that's okay.

When you make a movie, you can only make the movie that you would want to see.

Actors have given up their clout. Now decision making is in the hands of lighting men, designers, bankers, special-effects people. We need to cut that out and just go with the most able trained actors in the business.

The subjects have to come with questions for me. I don't make films where I'm a massive fan.

When I get to do whatever I want, I'm perfectly happy. I've found that the best scenario is that I just do what I do, and if somebody wants to be part of it, they should work as a conduit for what vision I have. They should help me complete the universe.

As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.

Obviously, for me, story is first and foremost, even in the face of the attractive idea of having all the cast there, or having a great piece of talent come to it.

As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.

As a writer, it's very difficult to just hand your script over to someone else, especially if you have to watch them hurt it, and that's when I decided I would direct my own work.

The best deal about being a producer is that unlike a director who has to go on the sets even if he doesn't get along with the actor, the producer has the liberty to remain behind the scenes.

I always want to encourage young artists. As the budgets get smaller, that might provide an opening for younger artists and more experimentation. Budgets had gotten quite large for art, as they had for architecture. I'm not going to cut back. The minute someone walks through my door, I go, "That's my thing and you got to let me do it."

Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

When I'm directing, I really try not to be tied to anything. I don't even have the sides in my hands. I have other things - ideas that I want to make sure I don't forget or that I want to accomplish. The endeavor isn't about propping up the screenplay; but about the communal effort of exploration from a lot of different departments - the actors, the DP, the costume designer - all these people and myself.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

Make the movie your way. Surround yourself with people who know more than you.

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

I think you have to be ready to switch gears and go with the team as a director, as opposed to superimposing your own strict idea of the story. There are very few directors that can micromanage and still come out with something that's living and breathing on a page. Wes Anderson is one of those.

When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm super-opinionated about what I do and don't like.