A Quote by Jennifer Jason Leigh

There's so much confidence and freedom that comes from that way of doing things. Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph make the set the place to be. It's fun. It's a kind of creative freedom that's really inspiring. Altman loved actors so much. He was a great mentor for me, really.
One of the things that I love about Robert Altman's movies is that, really, a Robert Altman movie is just a bunch of short films about various people told at the same time.
I took a class my freshman year in high school called Intro To Film, and I was introduced to Robert Altman's films, and I wrote my first paper on a filmmaker and it was Altman's 'M*A*S*H,' and Nashville and I think 'Short Cuts' or 'The Player,' I don't remember.
Really, what I'm doing is an attempt to continue the best work of the people I adore: Francis Coppola and Scorsese and Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick and those amazing directors whose work I grew up with and loved.
I think Robert Altman could see things in me that I didn't know I possessed, which is really exciting. He also instilled a tremendous amount of confidence, because he would say things like, "These are the bare bones, but I want you to go fill it out. You find the character. You bring it to me. You write whatever you want." And if you had an idea, he wouldn't want to hear about it. He's want you to show it to him.
I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.
I'm a big fan of Robert Altman, and one of the things I love in 'The Long Goodbye' is the way that he plays with the theme; it's just used in all these different ways.
Working with the actors, working with production designers, working with the creative people who surround the process is really fun, it's really inspiring and I take great pleasure in working with them. That's what's most fun about directing.
We have creative freedom because of budgets. Ever since I have been doing low budget movies, we've really had creative freedom.
I was offered 'Popeye,' which Robert Altman made. They offered me $2 million to direct that, which was good money. I wasn't interested in it. I don't like that kind of movie.
It's been reinforced to me, and it's a little cliche, but I've learned that you can't make a movie that even works, much less that's good, without really good writing and really good acting. That lesson has led me to not be distracted, so much, by the other stuff going on in filmmaking and to focus on the essence of a story, and the words and the events and the way that those are interpreted by the actors. That philosophy has taken me to a place that I really like.
I've worked with Robert Altman a couple of times too.
Robert Altman was such an incredible person to have the privilege to know and meet and have dinner with.
I was really fortunate from the time I arrived in Hollywood to work with some of the greatest directors from the beginning. I worked with Robert Altman, John Boorman, and of course Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino, Brian De Palma ... I couldn't pick one of them; they were all different, but they are all so talented.
The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories.
My job is really to... everyone is reading the script, and my job is to make sure we all interpret it in as much the same way as possible. And then I give them the freedom to sort of - to get their performance across and then make suggestions where things are not working and accentuate and push things where they really are working.
For me going solo meant freedom to collaborate and do whatever I feel I'm good at doing. For me it was really not ever expanding as an artist, developing everything from my songwriting to my singing to my mission statement to my vision. I've been so inspired by all the creative freedom that it brings that I have no complaints.
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