Creative Decisions Quotes

Films are all about decisions, and that's what I love.

If I had done some of the movies that I was offered as an actor - and very good movies, by the way, and some of them big moneymakers - I don't know that I ever would have taken what was the concentration or the time to do the movies that I produced. 'Reds' is a good example, but 'Shampoo' is also an example, and so was 'Heaven Can Wait.'

I would rather do three or four small parts every year as opposed to some of the lower-hanging fruit that might get my name above the title.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.

There's something about seeing a movie that you like, and being able to see the scenes that didn't make it, just as a window into the process of how choices are made and how a movie is made. To me, the idea of getting to have the scenes on the DVD is very exciting.

After 'Muriel's Wedding,' I first went to America, and I was sent all these scripts about fat girls overcoming hurdles. Something in me knew not to go down that road, even if it was a good script.

Every time I would say put a baby in every scene.

If we were writing what the fans wanted to see, Betty and Jughead would be the most linear, monotonous narrative of all time.

I am not someone who believes to doing a film just because it is off beat.

As the director, it's just a constant stream of meetings where you meet with all of the creatives who make all of the decisions for every part of the episodes. You're also scouting for locations, deciding on the locations, meeting with your first associate director; mine was Jennifer Truelove. She's one of my favorite people on the planet.

There are no minor decisions in movie making. Each decision will either contribute to a good piece of work or bring the whole movie crashing down around my head many months later.

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

I'm not into replicating old movies. But one should never say never. Tomorrow I may feel like making a part 2 of some of my movies.

I have made decisions based from purely an actor's point of view.

I wanted to just be a filmmaker, and I thought I wanted to do all the aspects, and it seemed like as a producer was the best way to do it, because I could have... You never have control on a movie, but you have as much control as you can.

Only one time in my career I had that feeling [that this is not gonna get made], it was for this movie [Life of Pi]. It was right before we started the physical pre-production. I pre-visualized the whole ocean part before we made the movie, I was that prepared. At one point they seemed to want to drop it because it was really risky. The budget we proposed was a lot higher than they expected, they wanted to [drop it]. After all, it's a philosophical book and a literature property, it's not Batman.

When I was younger, I didn’t know that I should just listen to my own voice, my own artistic sense of things when I was choosing projects, because one of the biggest creative decisions that an actor can make in the film business is what you will work on.

Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.

At the beginning of each year, we have conceptual meetings. How are we going to challenge ourselves this year? So we suggested a transsexual or transgender. And to be honest, I am shocked they let us do it.

As a showrunner, you can never be a 'maybe.' When I do movies, there is a lot of, 'Maybe' and, 'Let's investigate that.' But for TV, it has to be yes or no.

An actor is known by his choices, not by his box-office figures.

When you do a low budget movie, you get a little over-ambitious.

I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.

'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.