Self-Directed Projects Quotes

I started to make my own films, however small and however independent they were, from the beginning. And so, even though I was nobody, I was always the master of my own work.

I've always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do.

It's not like I'm looking for things that I can direct that I can also act in, but when it's right, I feel like the actor side of me wants to have that opportunity.

I had a certain career as an actor that I think was quite personal as well, and had a lot of integrity, but I wasn't writing my own things or directing my own movies.

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing.

If I choose to direct something, it's because I don't think it would get accepted.

Going forward, I have four different ways of approaching what I want to do - I can generate my own material by writing. I can produce, direct, act, or do a combination of these things, mixing it up.

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

I studied photography at Bard, but I just felt tired of it. Someone asked me to be in a video but didn't want to be in it, so they told me to make my own, and that seemed more fun to me.

Writing and directing, to me, was the logical evolution from my life as an actor: going from telling someone else's story to actually creating my own. Perhaps one day I will do all three: write, direct, and act in the same production. That might get a little hectic, though.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

When I got a bit older, I put on my own plays and forced my friends to perform.

Go out and make something that reflects your interests, your taste, and your ideas. No one will pay you to make something until you have a few things you can show that you've directed. I got my start by making short films on my own.

You just try to get the best jobs that you can get. Sometimes I produce my own movies, so that's your own sort of vision. That helps things. I don't know what it is. Probably just circumstance. I've definitely been aware of the fact that I want to do different things.

It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

I have real TV studios. If I have an idea, I can go shoot it. I can experiment. If I choose to air it or not, it's at my discretion. I don't have to do it to somebody else's time frame.

I know one thing - very few writers in Southern California get to write what they want to write. We are more or less worker ants, working for either film companies or tv companies or Internet companies. We do a lot of assigned work. Feelings hardly ever enter into it. If they do, they tend to be on a sort of soap opera level.

I like the model of people getting together to make something when they want to do it and not being dictated to by a cycle.