If you’ve noticed that I don’t use long takes, it’s not because I don’t like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It’s more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.
The ‘Aladdin’ thing – that’s not work; that’s just fun. Three days in the recording studio going mad, then the animators do all the work. Not a bad way to cash a large check, my friend.
On Letterman and Leno, it always bothers me when they go outside the studio and it’s daytime.
As you know, in America there’s no rights for the artist, so whatever films I’ve made kind of belong to the studio, so if they want to remake it they can.
I used to record but just in my own studio or in my friend’s back when I toyed with the idea of being a rapper.
I was the first wrestler ever in the history of wrestling to star in a major motion studio picture that became #1 box office of the weekend, and that gave the itch to I don’t know how many wrestlers.
To me, there is nothing better than me going into the studio with a live band and hearing those violins and that echo and that sound. I mean I loved it.
I joined the Actors Studio and began to work with Lee Strasberg, and that changed my work.
I feel like I’m stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it’s always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.
We’ve never performed the song live outside of recording it in the studio. That was a dream come true because Whitney, she’s an icon and she’s been one of my main mentors in this business.
The actor that taught me the most was Bernie Mac. I did my first big budget studio film with he and Angela Bassett, ‘Mr. 3000’ for Disney. Bernie taught me by example what creates success is humility and hard work.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen’s fairs, policemen’s balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I’d seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
I’ve never really had a problem with the imagination level of an audience. They’re always smarter and savvier than any studio exec will give them credit for.
And going into my studio at night, particularly at night when everybody’s asleep, is just a total pleasure for me.
I loved the medium of TV from the first moment that I got into a studio.
Once I got a record contract, and I took my songs which weren’t quite finished, or maybe they were a good idea, maybe they weren’t. I took them into the studio and developed them. They came to life and they evolved… and they’re great.
Being in the studio is like painting, you know, you can really take your time, and try different things, and kind of go deep into it.
We shot on location in our very first weeks, in our very first shows. I would like to go on location again, Hawaii would be good!! But normally, we tape five days a week in the studio starting at about 8:00 a.m. and continuing until about 8:00 p.m.
When you start out as a filmmaker, you do parodies, because you can’t really compete on a studio level.
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.
I like to come and go as I please which means I’m not anxious to dash back from the studio to fix dinner for a man.
I think the line is where you’re in the studio, you’re creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn’t be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn’t be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.
I was in a movie with Marlon Brando. Now, I didn’t have any scenes with Marlon Brando, but I had scenes with Martin Sheen and was around Dennis Hopper, who was a child actor in the studio system and was enamored of James Dean, as was Martin, and they were all sort of disciples of Brando.
My most heartfelt thank you goes to Impact Future Media and Cartoon Monkey Studio. Their dedication to the truth is very uncommon in the world we live in today. I am now, and will always be, grateful to their organizations.
In the studio you can auto tune vocals, and with drums, you can put them on a grid and make them perfect. I hate that sound. When someone hands me a record and the drums are perfectly gridded and the vocals are perfectly auto tuned, I throw it out the window. I have no interest in rock music being like that.
I met Jack Bruce, one of my heroes, in a studio while doing some recording. England had just beat Scotland in a big football match and I saw Jack trying to break into this refrigerator in the lounge, drunk out of his brain, and I didn’t know what to say.
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
Well, I think one of the problems with ‘Birds of Prey’ was there were too many cooks in that kitchen. The studio, the producers, the network, all had very different visions of what that should be. They should have just let Laeta Kalogridis control that. Instead they decided to try to get their hands in the mix.
When you record an album and it goes platinum… yeah, you’re in the studio and you work hard for months, but it’s not like your whole body hurts. Maybe you get a little hoarse and tired. But on ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ everything hurts.
I’ve built an 8-track studio in my house that’s virtually identical to what they used at Abbey Road, and I also own the 16-track set-up that Led Zeppelin used to record ‘Houses of the Holy.’ I’m interested in producing, but I’m mostly recording my own stuff.
The thing with me. I can’t stick musicians. I’ve thought about this. I can’t stand them, and being stuck in a studio with them I think that’s my strength I can hear what they can’t.
I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it’s superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently – if I had walked around the studio or gone out – it wouldn’t have turned out that way.
There’s not a lot of thinking that I need to do away from the studio on Broken Bells stuff.
I’ve been in enough films where the studio wanted that extra little cuteness to make it sellable.
My ideas come when I least expect it, so I’ve always got to have a studio nearby or close by somewhere.
In the studio system, things are expected of a film. By the first, second, third act, there’s a generic language that comes out of the more commercial system.
If I have a male protagonist, it’s a studio movie, and if it’s a female protagonist, it’s an indie movie. That’s just how it is. It’s not about the studios. It’s about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren’t interested in the woman’s story. They just aren’t.
For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don’t do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.
Now it really is, believe it or not, 90% of the films are green lit, not by the studio heads, but by the marketing department.
I can’t leave the studio until everything is as it should be. And I can’t put a record out unless I am completely happy with it. I never want to be at a signing and hear my album playing and think, ‘Oh no, I could have done that top note better.’
Most people when they rap usually have their homies in the studio who rap with ’em, but they homies don’t usually be producers.
The studio system collapsed only when Elizabeth Taylor charged $1 million for Cleopatra.
I’m not a guy to go in the studio and spend months, let alone years, like some people do. I cannot even be in the studio for a month, it will drive me nuts.
It’s easy to gain weight when you’re in the studio.
I’m working on a snow scene right now, and it’s summer. It’s hot, and I will get chilly. I’ll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it’s 95 degrees in the studio. I know it’s nutty, but it’s a projection you have where you step into the painting.
We love food. After our studio session, we devour dal makhani, butter chicken, and butter naan.
I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.
The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won’t lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don’t have anything on paper.
I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.
But in marketing, the familiar is everything, and that is controlled by the studio. That is reaching its apogee now.
I’m such a fanatic about exercise that I opened my own gym, 3Sixty Cycling Studio, and I exercise almost every single day.
It takes a week to do a sitcom in Hollywood. I do a show a day in my studio, three or four shows a week.
I walk into the studio and we’re all so happy to see each other.
