Gregory Harrison Quotes

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

I don't dictate the solos and I don't dictate the vocal harmonies.

There is no such thing as an artist - only the world, lit or unlit, as the world allows.

I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.

I'm worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer's creation - not an artist's creation.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

As a freelance artist, you have to please somebody instead of just making music. But when the employer trusts and leans on you to determine what is right for a scene or feeling, that's ideal.

When I started off as a choreographer, I had to do songs, which I may have wanted to do differently, but directors had their own inputs to give. But now, I take liberty to decide my own dance steps as well.

Every day the Daniels [Kwan and Scheinert] would come up with some amazing solution and [make it easy] to put yourself in their hands. There's something really lovely about knowing you're working with directors who know exactly what they want and exactly what they're looking for, and they're not going to move on until they have it. That, as an actor, frees you up a lot because you can [try different approaches] and they'll only use what's appropriate.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

Having total freedom to direct my own movies is more difficult than those I was hired for, where the framework has been already furnished. Unlike with my own work, I don't have to deny or feel embarrassed at the straightforwardness or orthodoxy of the directorial style, because I can say in excuse, "This is how I was asked to direct by those people."

The network shows tend to be run, in general, in my experience, by committee, and it's hard for actors and writers to do their jobs.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

My job is to just express something that I want to express. And if I'm ahead or behind the curve, that's for others to decide.

Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

I am convinced that in the arts, committees are useless.

Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.

There are a lot of global decisions that you can make as a co-publisher, and only publishers can make those kind of decisions. At the same time, there are some things you can do only as a penciler or creator. I want to keep my hands in both pots, so to speak.

I'm not an artist who has an agenda that's set by the work.

As a painter you're responsible yourself, 100 percent. In film, you have the editor, the director, the other actors. It has the advantage of not being solitary.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.