improvisational approach Quotes

To work from nature is to improvise.

The approach to that movie wasn't, 'Lets make this movie about Amsterdam and maple syrup.' The concept was, 'Lets go to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is fun.' So we flew to Amsterdam with our cameras and we saw what happened and then we got back and we sat down and we said, 'What's the movie here.' That's when we realized that the movie was 'The Maple Syrup Saga'.

Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer."

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.

The kind of acting that's wholly literary or cerebral is wrong. It's useless for me to have actors so much in their heads that they can't be organic.

I don't separate Robert DeNiro's comedy from the serious stuff. The one thing I realize working with him in all of his work, is that he doesn't do anything unless something happens to him in scenes - unless something happens to make him react. He never came in with a set idea of how he was going to do it, he never came in with guns blazing. He would just show up and wait to see what happened.

I'm not one of those actors who sits around the table and intellectualizing anything, or discusses much of anything. Everything for me is intuitive and instinctive.

Maybe it's wishful thinking, this snaggly faith of mine, or maybe it's Miles Davis saying, Don't play what's there, play what's not there.

Everyone's encouraged to put things in their own words, to discover new things. So there's definitely an element of dynamic improvisation, for sure, which I think gives those scenes some of their energy, some of their electricity.

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That's occasionally what happens. What more often happens is that we settle on some sort of - a few sort of structural ideas, like, "Okay, when I put my finger up, we're all going to move to the extremes of our instruments. So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we're going to stay there until I take my finger down.

People always said, "I can't believe you made a movie that had no script." Yeah, but here's the thing, if you've got actors who are used to that, and that's what they like to do, they're all good improvisers and they're all people that feel comfortable doing that, then you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's what you do.

I don't really have a method or a technical process. I studied [Sanford] Meisner, and that's the thing that really works for me. That sort of instinctual, in the moment, what the other actors do, working off them and letting the story unfold, as opposed to having an idea of what the story should be.

I've never really had a certain style of music in mind that I make, or am really adamant on how something should sound, but I like the process of not knowing, of just seeing what happens and what comes out.

We would do improvisation together. And that in a way, had almost a "student-film side" where we'd be sitting there with Robert Downey and Jon Favreau and we're playing around, we're jamming around and we read those pages and in next couple of days that's what we do, so it was a good experience. Kind of frightening at first because you didn't quite know how it was going to work out, but they had some very talented people there so it worked out well.

I don't have an idea for a play until after I've finished writing it. I write first, and come up with what it's about later. My technique could be compared to having a large canvas and coming in every day and putting a dot on it somewhere, and after several years - literally - I begin to say, That reminds me of an elephant, so I think I'll make it one.

I don't have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who's in my mind in reality.

So many directors these days direct by design and shoehorn you into things - direction or blocking - that they had in mind previously. They're short on time and they want to get that over with so they can get onto the finer details of a play.

I actually did a lot of improvised movies or movies that were partially improvised.

I go by the "Miles Davis school of production and band-leading", where you pick the best musicians you can, you provide them with a minimum of direction, and you just let the music happen. I've seen it work time and time again.

There's really never any sort of master plan. I find if I've got a couple of tunes that I think are possibilities, I phone everyone up and get them into the studio and we'll have a go at recording them.

I prefer a much looser style. Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity - killer. I don't get making sure you get every word right in some stupid speech just because a writer sat there and did it.

The way I go about making a movie... even the ones that are interview-driven, I go into them not knowing what's going to happen, and feeling my way through.