Colleen Atwood Quotes

The great thing about Stephen is that he sees the movie as a separate thing, I think. He wants it to capture the essence of the book, and if he feels that's been done, then he's not too particular about the details. I think that's why he's happy.

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.

When you don't have time, especially for a director, you cannot do exactly what you want to do. You have to cut your dream to fit in the movie you're doing.

There's no recreating what Michael Jackson and Diana Ross did in 'The Wiz'. We're trying to figure out who these characters are in 2015. How would these times change their motives, change the things they would say and do?

The kind of films I want to make are struggling to get made. And if they are getting made, they're getting made on shoestring budgets with not enough time.

Writing by committee becomes much less about a vision. It is really about a piece of merchandise.

Working on 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' I had endless arguments, like the studio saying, 'You can't have a main character that's got no eyeballs!' 'How is anybody going to feel for somebody with just eyesockets?' You know? So, it's those kind of things that really wear you down.

Financiers don't support their directors to cast properly. They don't have the vision of an artist. They're casting to spreadsheets, and it's making movies very mediocre. The movie business used to just be called the movies. Now it should be the business movies.

I had no problem with Ritchie. Ritchie and I never argued. We never had a problem. I think I was always able to write the things that he wanted - until he decided he wanted to be a pop star. And then he started doing pop music. And once he did that, that was the end for me.

There's really powerful and potentially dominating forces when you make a film that can harm it if you're incapable of orchestrating things.

For 'The Book Thief,' I wanted only one outcome, and that was for the director to follow his own vision, just as I had.

I kind of muddled through 'Pride & Prejudice,' but with 'Atonement,' I knew what I was doing. That makes it sound like I had no doubt. I had doubts - I didn't know whether it would work. But I knew exactly what I wanted to try to do.

I play a certain style. I'm not willing to compromise that part of me.

All musicians and artists - we all got quirks that have to be put up with at certain times.

When people finance a movie, they have their own ideas and have things they want to change.

I know a lot of editors who are very bitter about the directors they work with. They feel they could have done a better job, and I say to them, 'Oh really? Why don't you go try - it's not easy.'

Armaan has a simple approach and understands what a composer wants. I tell him, 'Give the song your own vibe but I will still come and fight with you and change it.'

I can only go with my gut and say what I would like to do, and then my producer comes in and makes it happen.

I thought there was a way of marrying what I wanted to do with filmmaking with pop videos, which I found out through a couple projects just wasn't possible. That's not saying anything about the artist. If you're making an Usher video, you're making an Usher video, not a film with an Usher song in it.

Working with friends isn't easy - the nature of an artistic project means it's about two strong visions colliding and a bit of mental wrestling.

That's what I wanted to do... I wanted to make a great film that just happened to be based on a video game.

I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really.

The wonderful thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. The worst thing about theater is that it has so many people involved in the creation of it. That dynamic is thrilling and challenging every time you make a show.

The reason I decided to become a solo artist in the first place was because I always felt that the results that I got from working as a team where everyone had equal say... ended up with compromised, watered-down results.