Creative Negotiation Quotes

This is one of my lesser moments, and one I'm not proud to admit to, but there's always a time I feel the need to have control over the process and try to defend the song from the person I'm writing with. It never, ever helps and always causes problems.

Do you have a record contract? I have a recording agreement. What's the difference? One is an agreement and one is a contract! I am a man who deals by ear.

Sometimes two artists wanna work together, but it doesn't mean it's gonna happen, because you have to find the right idea.

There's a constant dialogue going back and forth between the filmmakers and the producers.

But we wanted to work in a way we never had, which was write everything together. We had to face each other in the same creative room, which gets tougher as you get older, because you don't want to be confrontational.

When you're songwriting, it's like talking about your own life experience. When you're with a band, you have to compromise.

Once you start trying to sell creativity, you're always going to run into the problem that the people selling it aren't as creative as the people making it, and the people making it don't know how to talk business with the people trying to sell it.

We'd all like to be in the business where we don't have to report our numbers, too. You're dealing with a Netflix and an Amazon that don't have to report their viewership. They're not sharing those numbers, so how do you work with a creative entity to renegotiate future seasons when nobody has metrics?

Working with friends isn't easy - the nature of an artistic project means it's about two strong visions colliding and a bit of mental wrestling.

Songwriting is a give-and-take process, and it can lead to some good, healthy debates.

I've an idea for doing a Situation Comedy myself but its always difficult to get people to listen to you because they like to put their own ideas forward.

Carl Icahn, corporate raider by trade, is creative, a scrambler, and certainly not to be underestimated.

You can win more arguments then you might think as a writer, even though you legally have no recourse, and your script can get muddied and altered in any way possible. You can use reason, logic, and passion to argue persuasively for a case in your favor.

Writing by committee becomes much less about a vision. It is really about a piece of merchandise.

Being in a band is always a compromise. Provided that the balance is good, what you lose in compromise, you gain by collaboration.

The real drawback when you write with a partner is that where you want it to go and where they want it to go is similar, but not exactly lined up, and that's where it's going to lead you into trouble.