Project Ownership Quotes

I'm kind of getting more excited about developing my own stuff, or getting involved early in projects and doing my best to make things that I care about happen.

When I do 'Sweet Tooth,' really, whatever I want to do with the characters kind of goes. I'm sort of in charge.

Writer/directors are, for me, the most inspiring people to work for because they are the person on set that knows the answer to all the questions. They have the most invested in the project because they've been with it from conception.

When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.

I've been wanting to produce for some time because I want to have more creative control over the things that I do and not be victim to the whims of other people's desires.

I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours anymore.

I feel like if I don't get a film and somebody else does, then that film never belonged to me. The ones I get belong to me.

I like to have projects that belong completely to me. If done right, it can also pay better. But the majority of my projects are still destined for publishers.

We have an audience, the ability to fund our own projects, own our own projects, the ability to display our projects unencumbered by any middlemen. That's the perfect scenario.

I wasn't delusional at all when I signed on to do 'Furious 7,' that it wasn't my creation. It's the seventh movie in a series, for goodness sake!

I think there's something so wonderful about being part of the process from the seed of the idea to seeing it come to life on a screen. And to have a hand in that creatively, not just showing up as an actor for hire.

Control is the wrong word. The practice is very much about sharing, and, in any creative practice, some individuals, whether partners or directors, are much closer to certain projects than I could ever be.

Being producer you're still going to have to sell somebody who's going to give you the money on the idea and everything like that. But it does give you a little bit more control if you're thinking in that creative process; it gives you more control to tell the story you want to tell rather than sort of just reading a script that somebody else wrote and says, "Yes, please, you can hire me for this job." So it's a little bit more hands-on, a little bit more closer to the heart.

To me, the producing falls into the same as acting. It requires so much time out of your life, and I take it very personally, I realize. So if I do something, it just has to be something I love and I don't want anyone else to do. When I open projects, maybe something will appeal to me. I think I'm not opening them because I don't want anything to appeal to me right now.

I think as a director you have to make it your own. It'd be a mistake to approach a project with the idea of 'I'm going to do this the way I think somebody else would,' because then you'd never be clear on your idea.

Well, Barry, it's your film. So if it rises or falls, you're the man.

I knew 'True Detective' wasn't something I could allow anyone else to develop. But by the time HBO expressed an interest, I still had no real experience.

The ultimate thing is creating your own stuff and making projects for yourself. That's what Seth Rogen does. He's writing and producing a lot of the movies that he's the lead in.

When I did a high-profile project, I was not the developer of it.

I like having the space of my own project.

I don't know if I would do sequels. I almost feel like when I'm done with them, they're going to have to find their own way.

I still want to do features, but on my own terms.

The thing about TV is that it's great work for directors because the responsibility is not ours at all. In a movie, you choose a movie, and everybody points his or her finger at you afterward. It doesn't matter how much influence you had on the script, how much decision you had, or the fact that you didn't have final cut.

I think modeling is interesting, it's obviously nice to take on a character and go through the process. I'm very lucky that I've been able to do that but I think the challenges that come with the responsibility of art directing something is something that appeals to me. I've done it before in collaboration with other people but it's the first time someone's literally handed it over and been like, "What do you want?" It was really fun to kind of dream up a concept and then execute it with all my friends.

I think everything that I've done, I've been involved with for longer. Either you develop it from scratch, or you take something, and you develop it, and you work on the script, but I'm not sure how good I'd be at just sort of taking a piece of material and being a director for hire like that.