Garry Marshall Quotes

There is one crucial rule that must be followed in all creative meetings. Never speak first. At least at the start, your job is to shut up.

I don't want egos and personalities on the set that make it more difficult to make the film. I don't want people who take the focus away from the movie and the ideas behind the movie.

What's great about having an audience is they can let you know what they don't think is funny, and you can just cut that out and keep trying.

No director wants to be directed, but no good director... would shy away from the good ideas of others.

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

I like to come to the set with very strong ideas and strong opinions about how to do things. And I like also dealing with somebody who's like that.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

A key part of the process for me is having screenings: not official test screenings, just gatherings of people, some I know and some I don't. We ask what is working and what isn't. So it's not as if I'm shutting out input.

The way I feel about rehearsals is that the best idea wins.

I find that the projects I enjoy signing up to at the moment are with a director who's interested in the script - isn't completely sure what the movie is and isn't concerned about it. He's just interested in going on the journey and discovering it.

One of our big tools is screening. We screen usually 12 times, which is much more than most filmmakers do, and we recut in between each one, because we really need to feel how the audience is reacting to the movie.

If I post something, and my audience doesn't really like it or if they have other suggestions on how to make it better, I can take that feedback and instantly apply it to the next video.

'Creative director' is a catchall phrase for giving ideas. To me, it obviously means more than that. It's like being a counselor.

One of Pixar's key mechanisms is the Braintrust, which we rely on to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. It is our primary delivery system for straight talk.

There are films that look very interesting when on paper, but things change while shooting. At times, things changed during post-production, and I see no reason to blame anything on anyone. It is a collaborative effort. If it failed, we should face it.

I think the pairing of your material practice with your subject is something that is the constant concern of every artist for time immemorial.

I just try to direct in a way that interests me. And, hopefully, other people will find it compelling.

I've learned how to trust someone else's ideas with mine.

It's my approach as a filmmaker always to go in, not with a thesis or preconceived notion, but with curiosity and questions and inquiry. So in some way, I'm always surprised. I'm always finding paths of engagement.

I've always liked playing with somebody else and collaborating, just to get out of my own head all the time. Everybody does, but artists especially, we torture ourselves. So it's good for me to immerse myself in somebody else's work.

It's an artist's job to always have their antennas up.

I want to make my kind of films but make them work commercially, too. When my presentation meets the director's imagination, the result will be great.

The people you learn most from are the audiences, which is why I'm always best on my last night.

Getting onstage and trying out all of my material and what works well with audiences and what doesn't, what works well in different atmospheres, has been the best training.

I like to work with the best artists, full stop, around the world, and just make things happen man.