Quotes About Directors

Most directors, I discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they're going to direct has something to do with them. And this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater than the male part. And I thought, 'Why am I out there looking for directors?'—because you look at a list of directors, it's all boys. It certainly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, 'I'm just gonna become a director and that'll make it easier.'

I love to take chances. I love first-time directors. I love super-low-budget movies. I've done 80-something movies, and I want to just keep experimenting. First-time directors have new, fresh ideas, and lot of times they're risking a lot to do it, so it means so much to them. They're not just hired; they have their heart on the line, because if you've gone that far, you're probably a very passionate person.

I worked with young directors all my life, only young directors.

There`s only one list that`s more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palme d`Or. It`s the list of directors who didn`t.

Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.

It's not often I get to do a film that turns out good. Plus, there just aren't that many great directors out there. There are a thousand different decisions that need to be made with each script and it's the good directors that can make those decisions. It's a long and complicated process in regards to what looks good on paper. Working on a bad film can be fun too. It can be a good exercise that gets you writing.

As you're growing up, it's odd, because directors don't expect you to grow up. They think you'll be young forever, but as an actor, there is an awkward period when you're too young for old or too old for young, and it can be an odd time.

There's another aspect about the Seventies. Blazing Saddles, as wonderful as it was, sort of hurt the Western. It made such fun of them, that you almost couldn't take them seriously from that point on. That's why only Westerns that had the stink of Watergate or Vietnam could be taken seriously. There were so few Westerns made since then, from the Eighties on, that the few directors who did were so pleased with themselves and so happy to have the opportunity that they got lost in visuals, they got lost in the vistas and the pretty scenery.

A great director, first, is highly intelligent. And he is also a dedicated and willing to work hard. Now those are easy things to identify. The third is the creativity, and that is very difficult to identify in advance. This is why so many of the directors who have started with me were my assistant - the first one was Francis Ford Coppola.

I get to meet different directors and different people.

I think that Hollywood should also be influenced by directors from Hong Kong. You see how Quentin Tarantino is really the example of how you can develop, and how you can go ahead if you accept the existence of different cinematic cultures. There you have Quentin playing with kung-fu. That's why the independents are the most interesting.

I've worked with a lot of directors, some of them you wouldn't really attach the word 'artist' to their name.

I never storyboard. I hate it. I don't understand why so many directors want to make comic strips of their films.

My teachers believe that the creative producer's job is to service the vision of the director, to stay within schedule and budget, and to get the studio what they need, but you work for the director to get their vision on the screen. That's not how everyone approaches producing, but it is certainly how directors like you to approach producing. How I was brought up is that my job is to help you make the movie you want to make.

A lot of these people, these program directors, just like anybody else in the world, even though they're supposed to be leaders in the world, they're followers. They follow what they think someone else is doing, instead of trying to blaze a trail.

Most actors go, I read the script and fell in love with it; I fall in love with the directors.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff. So, getting to work with those kinds of directors and getting to tell those stories is what I want to do.

Maybe I'm too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal.

I've worked with very few directors who've asked of me what I asked of myself.

I get to play a great character while working with great actors and great directors on a great show.

My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.

As an actress, I think it’s important to look back and realize that we aren’t always quite as original as we think we are. There’s this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.

I've worked with Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro and Tom Hanks. I've worked with some really good directors: Woody Allen, Paul Schrader... My God, I've really worked with a lot of people. But I'm intimidated by them, and I'm always thinking, "Oh, my God, he's not going to like me, and I'm going to get fired."

My whole family is very artistic - my uncles are all actors and theatre directors.

Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think you need to do that.

One of the young production assistants (on 'Terminator: Salvation') stepped over to my chair and said, 'Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in 'Top Gun'?' And I said, 'I am, yes.' And she grinned and said, 'I knew it! Talent must run in your family!' And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, 'What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That's an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ's sake!'

Directing is the last frontier for women in the movie business. We are studio heads, we are producers and we are writers, but we are not directors in any numbers.

I just want to play interesting characters, and I want to work with the best directors I can work with.

We, as women, often believe that we have to endear ourselves by acting modestly. But that leads personnel directors to think: Anyone who gives themselves away so cheaply cannot be very good. On that point, women need to get much, much more self-confident and tough.

Work with good directors. Without them your play is doomed. At the time of my first play, I thought a good director was someone who liked my play. I was rudely awakened from that fantasy when he directed it as if he loathed it. . . . Work with good actors. A good actor hears the way you (and no one else) write. A good actor makes rewrites easy. A good actor tells you things about your play you didn't know.

Here is something no real celebrity will ever tell you: film acting is not very fun. Doing the same thing over and over again until, in the directors eyes, you get it right does not allow for very much creative freedom... In terms of sheer adrenaline, film has absolutely nothing on theater.

The lack of women directors is a sad fact of life. Kathryn Bigelows thrilling Best Director win may help turn things around.

Of course, at their best, movies are anti-literature and, as a medium, belong not to writers, not to actors, but to directors.

My dad is an engineer by trade but worked a lot with the people in the Indian film industry when I was growing up. He started out distributing films from India here in the '70s because there was no place to go for people to watch movies from the homeland. So he developed a network of actors, writers, directors, and musicians that became his friends and that he would tour around the country with, doing stage shows of the musical numbers from their films.

Even though I've mostly done movies, TV has developed in such a wonderful way over the past few years in the sense that film directors are being involved and some fantastic actors are committing to seasons of series. There are some fantastic writers working in that medium right now.

Sometimes I go to the cinema and I see a movie where the directors or the filmmakers are telling me what to think, what to feel. They are giving me all the answers, and I'm like, "What am I doing here?" I try to have an active audience that are thinking and feeling for themselves.

When people think of diversity, they think people of color, but it also means women, who are severely underrepresented as directors, writers and producers.

At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.

I love working with women - I love women - and we need more women directors. We need more feminine sensibilities in movies.

If you're creative, they let you be the showrunner, producer. The first thing my partner and I did as producers was hire ourselves as directors - because who else would hire me?

What's interesting is that producers, directors and writers tend to typecast me in terms of whatever movie they've seen me in most recently.

I want make more records with my sister. I want to go on the road. I want to tour around the world. I want to continue to make great films and work with incredible directors that I respect and look up to.

I really enjoy the process of making movies. The only thing that really concerns me is working with great directors and actors, and that is fun and exciting.

I came across awful characters when I got some kind of status and came to Hollywood. Then you have directors trying to sleep with you, assuming that you will do things because of the way you dress.

Directors, like actors, get typecast.

To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.

The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.

I like filmmakers where, if their film comes on and you step in halfway through it, you can recognize that, hey, this is a Coen Brothers film. Or, hey, this is a Stanley Kubrick movie. You can recognize some filmmakers. Like, if you put on a Sam Raimi movie, you can tell that it's a Sam Raimi movie pretty quickly. I like a signature style that people can recognize and relate to, and connect with. I think that is part of why we seek out certain directors. We want to see how they view the world.