There was a time in my career when my hackles would really get raised if someone came in and said, 'We need you to do this or that.' But the fact of the matter is, you're working in a shared universe, and all elements of the universe are, ideally, going to mesh and work together. That's my goal. I want to be on the team.
See, I am not a writer. 'Nach Baliye' has its own creative team and a brilliant one at that. But I will give my own inputs if I feel I can improve something.
In my experience in series TV, if you have a good crew and a great cast, it's going to be a great group - similar to the theater where it's a bunch of people who are really talented and go to work each day and challenge each other, and if you are lucky enough to get a hit then it's five or six or seven years of this kind of work.
It's ludicrous to think people work for you: 'a film by...' doesn't exist. Directed by, maybe, but it's a film from a collective, a group of people whom you consult and seek your counsel and advice and vice versa, too.
There is no sense in doing a wonderful script with somebody who can't direct because that is a disaster.
Me being an artist working with dancers and seeing how hard they work, they are the first to show up and the last to leave. They work just as hard, if not harder, than me - and they never get credit for it.
Working on a play is a vibrant and collaborative business. Everyone from the choreographer to the music director to the director to the writers work together toward the same goal, and everyone chimes in on everything.
I've done a lot of collabs, but most of the time, it's me on someone else's track.
The initial plan for Rooster Teeth is really different from the initial plan for the group, because we started as a group that was making one show: 'Red vs. Blue.'
I think it reaffirmed something that I believed in and conceptually always had faith in which was that you're most effective when you work as a team. I love that about filmmaking. I stopped playing team sports at 15-16 because of acting. I think I find a kind of new team sport in filmmaking in a way.
If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.
I think getting the rest of the guys in the band to write is important.
I loved working with Eric Close and J T Walsh.
I don't know other couples that work together a fraction as much as Nick and I do. We met in a play, and we've done TV and movies, and we just did 'Annapurna,' our off-Broadway show, and we've done theater together several times, so it's just a little bit of everything.
It's very important for actors to feel like a part of the puzzle and not the puzzle itself.
Me and Kanye work awesome together. He's a creative man, I'm a creative man, we put our ideas together, it's like the perfect formula.
And 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' was a very transitional film for me in that I was one of the producers and you know, came up with the idea with the writer and the producer, as well. But, it was a very collaborative event. You know, I really love working in that way.
Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to the notion of a star.
I prefer working with artists who are prepared to get down in the dungeons and get the job done.
Necessarily, I'm always involved in casting, as any playwright is, because the whole process of putting on a play is a collaborative, organic effort on the part of a bunch of people trying to think alike.
Whatever Kanye tells me, I just try to put it in my little machine and make the perfect solution for it. That's always our collab formula, and that's just how 'Gorgeous' came about.
I'm not one of those playwrights who says, 'Show up, hit your marks, and don't talk to me!' I always want to hear from the other artists involved, whether it's the director, the lighting tech, or the actors.
No one person can take credit for the success of a motion picture. It's strictly a team effort. From the time the story is written to the time the final release print comes off the printer, hundreds of people are involved - each one doing a job - each job contributing to the final product.
On 'The Deuce,' the writers' room gets like group therapy.
On a film, you start to get closer and closer with the people you're working with, and it becomes like this circus act or this travelling family.
