Producer's Perspective Quotes

Sometimes there's something that a writer doesn't see or a producer doesn't see when he's looking at a shot.

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.

One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right.

As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.

The Whole Wide World is the first movie I've ever produced.

There have been times when I've been asked to do things and I've thought, 'This is great! This is a great script. But, I do not believe myself in this role.' I pretend I'm the producer and I think, 'If I was making this movie, would I cast myself in this part,' and if that doesn't feel right to me, then I don't even go audition for it.

I'm without a doubt a producer first. The lyrics happen towards the tail-end of the process, mainly because they're more stream-of-consciousness. It's very rare that I'm going to tell a really concrete story.

Everything I make as a producer, I visualize it as a DJ first. And all those beats, I test them as a DJ.

I know it sounds funny coming from me, 'cause I produced it, but that's one of my favorite bodies of work. That's what 'Beast Mode' was when it came out and still is.

As a producer, I want to back projects, talents, and scripts that speak to me not just as someone from the industry, but as an audience.

When you have to cast movies from a producer's standpoint - when you've been on the other side of casting sessions - you just get a completely different perspective on what that process is of getting a job for an actor. You realize how completely impersonal it is. If anything, I think it's made me a lot less sensitive. So much of this is logic and business, and it's got nothing to do with whether people are good or not. Unfortunately, I think that's one of the last things that gets factored in when you're assembling a cast.

I've always been interested in this idea of looking at these monster stories and trying to really understand the mechanics underneath. That's very much true of this movie I made, 'All Good Things,' as well as 'Catfish,' which I produced.