Quotes About Improvisation

I always leaned toward free jazz... experimental jazz and progressive jazz. I feel like jazz is just part of the flavor and palette that you have as a musician to experiment with.

The first time that somebody handed me a sheet of paper with a promo on it, it was like a 'throw up in your mouth' kind of moment. And it's not, like, their fault, you know? It's not the writers' fault. But if was my world, there would be no written promos; there'd be no scripts.

My character has to be alive. It can't be a mere prop, and it has to have a life of its own. I need to have that space to play around and the scope to interact with the people around me. That freedom would give me a lot of margin to improvise with.

There used to be no bound scripts and the dialogues were given to us on the day of the shoot. There were no proper makeup rooms.

But with 'Newsrevue' I started doing some characters, and I just loved how you were in control. You could write something that day and go and do it that night, rather than waiting for a job that involves other people. So I did character stand-up, and then proper stand-up, and I loved it; I got addicted.

I guess that if I was a normal cartoonist who did things properly, I'd think up the background information first and then come up with the story. Saying that, you'd think that I don't really think through anything.

I am always fascinated by the way kids create their own world. That is something I am very attentive to anywhere I go.

An actor can never plan. You never know what can work in your favor or not and then, may be the whole dynamics can change.

I've never done an improvised movie as a fictitious character. I think that's the challenge.

I must have been 3 years old or less, and I remember paging through these comics, trying to figure out the stories. I couldn't read the words, so I made up my own stories.

When we don't have all the details about our characters, we have to make it up to fill in all the details. So, for me, writing and acting go hand in hand.

I didn't know what I was going to get. You never do, when you're filming something for real.

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

I think the blues is fine for blues players, but free blues has never made much sense to me.

I like to tinkle at my piano when I'm working out a new song - I just put my fingers down and see what comes out.

I know very few people who have literally improvised a film from start to finish.

Blues is the first step to get to jazz.

I play like I always used to, with no agenda. And, every once in a while, I will play something I really hadn't thought about or even intended to play. And I'll go, 'Whoa! What was that?'

I think the drummer should sit back there and play some drums, and never mind about the tunes. Just get up there and wail behind whoever is sitting up there playing the solo. And this is what is lacking, definitely lacking in music today.

When I play, I stare at the left hand of whoever is playing lead. And I get to know what people are playing well enough that when they start going somewhere, once they arrive, I'm already there.

Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.

Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment.

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

My whole career has been completely random and haphazard.