"Be prepared to not be involved"

"Joel Schumacher, who I consider to be one of the wisest people I’ve ever met, once told me a great thing: “You have to be very careful not to become the only person who cares, because then they have you. You have to be prepared at any moment to say, ‘You guys seem like you have it all under control and you have a very clear idea about what it is that you want. Why don’t you just do that? Why do you need me to be involved?’ ” The only way you’re ever going to be in control of what it is that you’re doing is to be prepared to not be involved.

I look at directors who say, “Well, I just have to do something. I haven’t done a movie in two years.” I’m like, “Really? You have to do something?” I feel like you shouldn’t do something—you should do the thing. You should be ready to go to the mat for it. You should be ready to say, “This is the way that this should be done.” So don’t care too much. That’s an unfair paraphrasing, but what Joel meant was you have to somehow impart how much you care about stuff to a number of other people and get them to care. You can’t think of it in terms of what you’re going to get out of it. You have to think of it in terms of planned obsolescence. “I’ll never be finished with it; at some point it’ll be finished with me.” (David Fincher)