Tavis Smiley Quotes

Nobody engages in a film, regardless of what your job is in it, to make a bad one.

If I don't have to think about the commercial aspect of it, then I feel like I'm going to make better films.

I don't believe in making a record and rushing it.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

I think now that I've tried directing, I'm not interested in doing adaptations anymore. I could do an adaptation of someone else's work that I would write, but the idea of taking someone else's material entirely doesn't interest me. One of the things that I found really helpful, at least in my mind - and I've never discussed this with the actors or with the people I work with - is that being a neophyte in directing, I feel like I have a kind of authority simply because I'm the writer as well.

If you're going to write, write one poem all your life, let nobody read it, and then burn it. This is very young thinking, I confess, but it is the seminal part of my life.

I don't want to make a half-assed film. It's not my area of expertise.

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota.

People always ask why I don't make independent movies. I do make independent movies - I just make them at Sony and Paramount.

Making movie you just think, well, you know what you're gonna do, and you just when it comes down to the very specifics of it, you kind of have to rely on your mode of panic, and how well your imagination and creativity and all that works when you're in that moment. And you know, frankly, I never worried about that. I never worried that as we moved into the very specifics of it.

The only real reason that I'd have for working for Hollywood is the fantastic amounts of money involved, and that isn't enough of an incentive to really give up the degree of control that I have over my work at the moment with comics. I suppose that's probably why I don't have any designs on being a screenwriter.

My approach has always been to put 100% into the movie I'm making right now. I think sometimes filmmakers put too much thought into the grand franchise they're going to build. And guess what? If the first movie doesn't work there is no franchise, so I'm always concentrated on making the best, best possible movie right now.

To me, movies are valuable as an art form and as a wonderful means of popular entertainment. But I think movies have gone terribly wrong.

Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.

You have more and more people coming into the tent with the creative guys [on Hollywood films]. You have marketing and concept testers, advertising people. What you find gets the high numbers is easily appealing subjects: a baby, a big broad joke, a high concept. Everything is tested. The effect is to lessen the gamble, but in fact you destroy a writer's confidence and creativity once so many people are invited into the tent.

Harvey [Weinstein] didn't want to release [MY SON THE FANATIC]; he held it for two years because he wanted a happy ending, although I don't know what that means. Does that mean the taxi driver leaves his wife or doesn't leave his wife? I think it has a happy ending.

I like to say that films are never finished, they're only abandoned.

They're always surprised with what I want to do and don't want to do. I think they're surprised I don't want to do robo-tech. I don't know, it's like they want me to have a long career. And be prolific and make big movies.

The reason I do small, independent movies is because I want to keep my soul intact and maintain some kind of integrity within this industry.

When you take that to the next level of guiding a group of filmmakers to actually depict him, it's even more challenging. The one that that I think everybody involved believes is that we won't move forward with this until we believe it's right. There's no deadline that a movie has to be made by. We have to believe that we have served the responsibility, however long it takes us to get to that point.

It's absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It's a betrayal of whatever talent you have.

In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is not nearly so large as people think.

You know when I think about what I'm doing - what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it's my artistic work.