With directing, your day is done. When you hit seven o'clock, it's "Cut." That's what it is. For better or worse, that's what you've got and you have to make that work, and there's something incredibly liberating about that because you can't torture yourself. You have to focus on the moment, and you have to embrace every second and opportunity and maximize that, whereas with writing, there's no imperative there. You just amble along.
Dan MazerYou sit down in the morning on your own to write something. You get to the end of the day and it's not like you've cracked it and it's finished and it's done, because it can always be improved. It can always be changed. There is no right answer, so you can drive yourself crazy with just the expanse of infinite possibilities when it comes to writing.
Dan MazerIt's tough to make funny films. And the truth is, with this process, especially if you write your own movie, then you're giving three years of your life to it. And so, I just have to be sure that when I embark on it that I'm happy to think that in three years' time I'm going to be sitting in a room on the tenth floor of an odd office building at Ginsberg Libby talking about it. So I'm keen not to jump into it too quickly and just make sure it's something that I really want.
Dan MazerI learned that I enjoy directing a lot more than I enjoy writing, which is interesting, because writing is lonely and infamous basically.
Dan MazerAnd then, movie-wise, I'm writing a couple of things. They're all comedies. It's the only way I know. I'm also being sent scripts, which is really nice, kind of off the back of this, so I don't necessarily have to generate my own stuff. I'm just looking for something that's explosively funny and relatable in equal measure.
Dan MazerSo, as opposed to getting people in to read the script and read scenes with me, what I wanted to do was sit down and chat to these people and just say, "Okay. Do you share my sense of humor? Do you understand what this film is getting at? Do you know the tone that we're trying to get to?" And it was interesting.
Dan Mazer