A Quote by Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Every movie goes through that U-shape where you start with 'Oh that's a great idea. I love it.' Everything's possible and then you face 'Oh, we can't do that, and that's impossible, and that's a bad choice.' You go the practicality of it. And then you come up to 'Great.' But that middle part is when you don't have results yet.
If we have a great idea, we'll go, 'Oh, this could be a cool movie.' Or really for us, it's more like, 'Oh, this is a really bad idea. Let's do this. This seems really stupid.'
I guess the hard part is more in the development stage when we're writing it. The logic is hard. You come up with a great idea and you get all excited that it's going to work and then you go down two hours and then one guy turns to everyone and goes, 'Wait, that makes absolutely no sense because if he was there, then this wouldn't have happened, then this,' and it completely implodes.
Sometimes you think, "Oh man, this is going to be a fantastic movie," and then when you see it put together, you're like, "Oh, huh. Well, that didn't turn out quite the way I thought." Sometimes you think you're part of a project and it isn't that great, and then it sort of becomes a pleasant surprise. But I think there's just too many elements that affect the tone of a movie, so I think even for a director, it may be hard to gauge that.
I don't want to be the guy who goes, 'Oh yeah, blah blah blah... everyone freaking well knows me.' Because that's not the case. Once in a while, someone will remember some silly thing I did and then they feel good. And they go, 'Oh, hey, Michael Bolton, I celebrate your whole catalog.' And I'm like, 'Great, great, I totally get it.'
When you're trying to come up with an idea for a movie it's actually the hardest part - the germ of the idea. Inevitably you think of something that would be great and then discover that it was on an episode of The Simpsons.
If the movie is good then great, but if it's not then God, I feel so bad for that person with their face fifty feet tall, all blown up. Some people would be happy with that, that as long as their face was out there they're stoked about it. I'm not like that.
Sometimes what happens I think is that actors finish a movie and they go, oh my god, I'm never going to work again, even big huge actors, and so they'll take something thinking that something else will never come along. But for me, I freak out - because I'm a bit of a workaholic - the second I finish a movie going oh my god, what am I going to do, but I can start writing the next day so it doesn't force me to make a bad choice acting-wise.
Sometimes during a show or a film, while you're shooting it, you'll think, "This is great, it's going to be fantastic, the script is incredible, and the actors are great, and everything is working out brilliantly." And then you see it, and you kind of go, "Oh god, it's not as good as I thought it was," and it doesn't get an audience to watch it. It only does a couple of festivals and then dies and whatever.
What I'd love to do is every now and then go, 'Oh my God, I've got this amazing idea for 'Doctor Who.'
I hear a really good pop song every now and then. 'ROAR' by Katy Perry, I love that! 'Poker Face'... Oh! What a song! And 'Rolling in the Deep'... Oh!
When you do a movie, you shoot, and then you go away. A lot of the times you walk about from the movie, you say, 'Oh, I get that scene now... Oh, that whole ending - I wish I could have done another shot.'
Every role I get is always a challenge. I can read a script and say, 'Oh, I can do that!' and then when I start working on it, I suddenly realize that I had no idea what I was getting into. Then I have to really work hard!
I'll look through a script, and if there's a lot of night shooting I tend not to want to do it. If there's huge party scenes and I'll go through a few pages and say "Well, at least I'm not in this," then the last page my character walks in and says something, I say, "Uh oh, that's going to be three days on the set sitting around drinking coffee at the craft-service table." Unless it's a great part. All in all if it's a great part you'll do it and I'll say, "Well, I'm gonna be on the set for three days."
[Sometimes] I will go through periods where I will think 'Oh maybe I should do a commercial movie' and then I just think, someone gave me a really great piece of advice, someone from my agency weirdly, they said the only clients that are happy are the ones that just do what they want to do. So I just kind of do everything for myself.
I know a good story from a bad story. But when you have a really good story and they make it bad, I'll say to my wife, "Oh, tonight, I'm going to enjoy watching television because I did great, and wait until you see this." And then, they put it on and it's like - oh, that's not so good. They are fake news.
It's like a living process. You start out, and you see the Eiger north face, and you think, 'That's impossible.' Then you start to dream. Then you climb the Eiger north face. Then maybe you go to the Himalaya.
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