I've done some collaborations which have ended up like Chinese whispers, but the most successful was with Tilda Swinton... Together we transcended our previous work and made something better together than we could have done apart.
Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all.
Filmmaking is not a one man show. It is not like I'm thinking something and they are expressing it. I try to pull the actor in and together we try to get the expression. It is not my thinking alone, it is our thinking. The actor also becomes a part of the thought process.
...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.
When you're doing collaborative music, the relationship that forms is a very bonding kind of experience.
was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.
The Constitution of the United States
We tend to think of great thinkers and innovators as soloists, but the truth is that the greatest innovative thinking doesn't occur in a vacuum.
At the end of the day, all you really have is your own sense of your artistic ability and I've always stuck with that my whole life. I guess there is always a bit of relief that I have and real joy of being able to engage other people who are talented, equally or better than you, and you can work with them.
Often we make songs with people for us and one for them.
It's important to tell the artist's story. It's their song! And it's always more fun to write together with the artist!
The end goal is to make a piece that everybody has ownership over and everybody's proud of because everybody contributed to it. I think there's a communist, socialist vibe to 'Portlandia' to make it work.
I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist.
Writing with a partner is, in some ways, an easy but odd process. Two people come into a room and look to each other for motivation. One might not be in the right mood at any given moment. And somehow, you begin; somehow, out of your exchange of thoughts, something engages both of you, and the process of collaboration begins.
I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.
I think when you play with someone, you tend to pick up their game and try to develop something together.
My favorite thing is to have collectives. Even when it comes to filmmaking as well, filmmaking and music and most art in general, I feel like everyone should have the same say. If you're in a collective, I feel like everyone should have the same say.
I think when people are jumping on top of each other's ideas, it elevates it a lot more than me going into the studio and working on something all by myself for a while.
For me, improvisation is about working with a partner. That is much easier to do in the interview, because you have a sounding board.
I like little collaborations where the other thing happens, where it's half-baked or it's improvised, and let's develop it together. "What do you want to wear? Do you have an idea?" All that's fun to do, and I like that, but it doesn't take anything away.
I'm all over the place. As you may have seen from the credits, I write with everybody.
I'm one that likes to collaborate. I love feeding off the creative energy, and it only makes me better.
