Quotes About Improvisation

I like acting with no lines because all of a sudden you're able to express things without always worrying about the text. It's great to have a great text, but there's a lot of stuff you can't say in words, and I think there's something really nice about good physical moments.

I write my scripts on a whim, without worrying about plot points and graphs.

There's nothing worse than bad scatting, except maybe bad mouth trumpet. Mouth trumpet may sound like a trumpet, but it's really more like playing a kazoo. The instant you do your solo, the audience has a bit of a chuckle.

You never know when you'll have a bad idea for a worse joke.

The worst thing you can do as a comedy director is be on set and think of something ridiculous, or an actor comes up to you with something ridiculous, and you say 'No, no that's too much.' Let's not worry if that's too much, let's shoot it, and then decide if that's too much when we see it.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

My favorite way to cook is to look in my cabinets and see what I have. That's the most fun. 'I don't have tomatoes, but I have this chili-garlic sauce from the Asian grocery store. Let's throw that in there and see how it affects my beef barley soup!'

Our pasta primavera was born when I promised fresh pasta with tomatoes and basil to critic Craig Claiborne, but we had no tomatoes.

People laugh at me because I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow.

Before there were any sort of 'recordings' there was performance. If we are devolved back to the Stone Age tomorrow, there will be performance.

The only thing I took to Glastonbury in 1990 was a ton of tin foil!

We like to create an atmosphere where people can try whatever they want and experiment. But ultimately people tend to fall on the script and there isn't a ton of improvisation. There certainly are some improvised moments and we encourage that. If it's better than what we wrote it'll be in the movie and if not, it's out.

I don't deal in terminology, I deal with expressions: colors, shapes, tones, characteristics.

Americans are so direct. They'd ask me, 'What's your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?' I don't know what I'm having for my tea tonight let alone a five-year plan.

With stand-up I could think of something now and say it onstage tonight. It's totally pure, I love it.

You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.

I have tons of jazz records: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis. I could go on and on.

I give everything far too much thought. If you think you know what you're doing, then you can kind of relax, and then you can improvise and play and just enjoy the day rather than be chasing the lines.

There are no leftover Tool songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs - the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.

Improvisation is not a presentational form, except in small doses, or as a game. It's a tool.

Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.

I think jazz is a wonderful learning tool.

I think improvisation is a technique and a tool. I think that even the best of them fail most of the time, and in the end, the audience is not interested in how you got there but in what you're saying. The more clearly and concisely and artistically you say it, the more effective it is.

Coltrane would do what you'd get a Roland Pro Tools module to do but with a group of jazz musicians.