Time & Perspective Quote by Mike Figgis

Figgis is describing a kind of creative choreography that looks permissive on the surface and is quietly authoritarian underneath. He talks like a collaborator - give musicians a structure, let them play “on top of” it - but the real flex is in the preparation: temp versions, test runs against picture, relentless iteration until “I’ve found what works.” By the time the players arrive, the sandbox has walls.

That’s the director’s mindset applied to music: spontaneity is welcome, but only after it has been engineered to land. The phrase “interesting for them to play on top of” is doing a lot of work. It frames the musicians as performers adding texture to an already-decided dramatic arc, not co-authors shaping the story. The subtext is a defense against the romantic myth of the genius jam session. Film scoring isn’t a bohemian loft; it’s a timed, budgeted pipeline where every minute in a studio has a price tag and every cue must serve a cut.

Context matters here because Figgis came up in worlds where improvisation is real currency (he’s a saxophonist as well as a director). He’s not dismissing musicianship; he’s translating it into cinema’s practical constraints. “So I’m not wasting their time” sounds humble, even considerate, but it’s also a claim of control and competence: I did the messy searching before you walked in. In an industry where chaos is routine, he’s selling discipline as respect.