D. A. Pennebaker Quotes

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

We've been working with the very best in the business. The studio really just let us alone to make the films.

With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.

I do love being solo because I can have more of my own creative input to every aspect of my career.

People say I've gone against Hollywood, but I've tried to be independent within Hollywood, tried to be my own person.

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

Putting out my album on my own label has been a great experience for me. It's been very inspiring. It's like a new start for me and having all this creative freedom is so liberating and exciting.

I want to write and direct and kind of do my own thing.

I'm making the music I want to make, in my own space, and it's just incredible to be able to continue to do that.

My dream isn't running a studio or doing anything managerial in any way, shape, or form.

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

I wanna take what I'm doing and create something around it as opposed to trying to fit into someone else's world.

Making an independent film is so great because you're your boss. And you have to be disciplined. You know? Because there's nobody telling you anything. But you have to kinda, you know, if you have an instinct to do something, you do it. There's nobody to run it by.

Wherever the wind blows me, I'll go! My eventual goal is to have enough experience to produce something on my own.

The only purpose of education is freedom; the only method is experience.

I consider myself an independent filmmaker.

One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself.

Maybe certain aspects of what I was doing were reacting against what was happening or what people said, too. That's something that happens when you're starting out. After some time goes by and you get a little perspective, you realize that you don't need to react. You can just carry on with what you're doing. That took me a long time figure out; I've only gotten to that point in the last five or 10 years.

I don't mind that if I ever star in movies, they'll likely be mine. That's okay, because my great role models - Woody Allen, even Tyler Perry, who is actually one of my role models, even if that seems kind of strange - they do that themselves. And it's great. They build empires, and they're known as having their own voice. I think it's 20 times more fun to act on a set where I feel the freedom to change the dialogue.

What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.

I've worked really hard to build up a career on my own. I turned 30 recently and it took me a long time to get the chance to make a feature film and do it on my own terms.

A movie is kind of like being the captain of a ship, which is nice, but when I perform by myself it's just surfing on the water and nobody really knows what happens.

Making music is so much more self-motivated. It's my own music. It's my own time. I don't have a team around me that's helped me make everything.

I've seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don't do commercials, I don't do films pre-prepared by other people, I don't do star system. So I do my own little thing.