Quotes About Independence

I never saw myself so much as an actor. I wanted to be a cartoonist like Charles M. Schulz and create my own world and be able to have a studio at home and not commute and be able to be with my family.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

When I started working on my own music, I didn't have the chance to record in a big music studio, so I had to record everything myself.

I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.

I have my own studio down in Miami.

For 'Filth,' we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.

I could never be a movie star and get up at 7:30 to be at someone else's studio.

With an independent film, you have a little more freedom, and you also have less money, so you're sort of struggling to get it done, to get something that works. With a big studio, everything is there for you, and it's easier.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.

I thought I'd do everything on four-track, and then I'll record every instrument myself in a studio, and then I'll have a solo album released by spring.

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

Johnny was great in the studio; he was there to make the music that he wanted to make. We lived right beside each other and had a rehearsal studio that was just ours, with nobody else using it, it was part of Johnny's house, so we could rehearse every day.

I prefer playing in the studio because you have much more control over things.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I have only one loyalty - to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.

People tend to think that because I need all this time on my own in the studio, that I need time on my own, period. And that's not really true.

I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.

I lived in a studio apartment until my mid-30s. I don't have an extravagant lifestyle.

When I tried to get 'Stargate' made, I took it to every studio in Hollywood and every studio said, 'Sci-fi is dead. It's a dead genre. No one wants to see science fiction anymore.' And I had to go and raise the money independently to make that movie.

Relatives cannot help you in the studios. You stand or fall by your own efforts.

I don't want to only make the movies that studios will greenlight.

My movies are not messed with by the studios.

In the old days the studios guided your career. Now it's all up to you.