Kenneth Lonergan Quotes

When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

I've directed things that other people have written before, and I've written things and given them to other directors. So I'm very versatile in terms of that, and I enjoy all of it.

One of the greatest things about 'Continuum' is how great the writing is; our writing room is one of the most talented ones I've ever had. It really helps me as far as character development because they paint a very descriptive picture of who the characters are while still letting us have freedom to put in our own ideas.

When you are acting, you are just one piece of the puzzle. You don't see how everything fits together. It feels like you have less authorship over the entire product. In directing, you take the entire picture into account, so you're challenged in a different way.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

I enjoy directing more when I don't have to direct myself. I like when I can just be the director.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

Eventually, everyone said, Why don't you direct? It would save time. And that's how it started.

To be a good director, you have to spend a lot of time on actual sets, but today, there's a lot of people who spend a lot of time in dark rooms writing a script, and they'll go in and tell the story to some suit at a studio who says, 'Okay, this is great, let's go.' But that doesn't necessarily mean you know what to do once you're on set.

It's different being a director. I suppose, especially if it's a story you've written and you feel compelled to tell, in some ways it's a lot easier than acting because you're orchestrating the piece. As an actor, sometimes you're trying to second-guess what people want.

Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

As always, we start off with asking, 'What's a good episode?' We don't think about timing, and we don't think about logistics. We just think about what would be good.

When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.

Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It's the most personal process ever. It's the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

When you write and direct your own film, you basically know exactly what you want. Or you hope to. For the studio, it actually can make life a little easier, because if you have a bunch of questions, they only need to call one person.

There have been days where I've had two writers' rooms or three writers' rooms going, and you walk back and forth. And then you sort of throw yourself on the sofa, and you go, 'Just talk at me for, like, 20 minutes,' and my brain will catch up with this particular story. But I find that exciting.

It's a very different thing when you're creating the world as opposed to when you're just part of the world. I love the detail of it, the problem-solving of it, and I love working with actors.

The writing of 'The Ladykillers' was fun. But once it goes out of your hands it's not fun, 'especially for someone who is used to being hands-on like me.

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.

I really enjoyed writing the adaptation of 'Into The Woods.' I thought it was wonderful to not be the director, frankly. I really enjoyed that aspect of it.

Actually, no, but I am close to the people who are working on Chicken Little, and I'm very close to the people over at Pixar. I mean, as far as stories are concerned, almost everything we have could be told that way.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.