Quotes About Directors

It's not that writing staffs don't change at all, but they don't change very much. Directors are freelancers. There are directors who do five or 10 episodes of a show every year for years, but most directors are freelance, they come and go.

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.'

Some directors can tell stories and it becomes very intimate and small, and it's almost like a secret. Some directors have the gift of finding a way to show it and tell the story, in a way that brings in the audience.

A lot of new American directors have had mentors who have given them advice. And some of them have had the way paved for them by huge Hollywood directors who saw a younger version of themselves.

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.

Favourite directors change, like favorite authors. I had a passion for Gide and Stein and Faulkner. But now they're no use to me anymore. I've assimilated them - so, enough, they are a closed chapter. This also applies to film directors.

A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well.

It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.

Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn't done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, "What you're looking for is exactly the same thing you've done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.

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.

If Martin Scorsese calls, I am available. And then there the ones, well, you can just run down the list - any of those Oscar-nominated films, they have amazing directors across the board.

Sometimes the directors were afraid of what they brought out of me.

I get to meet different directors and different people.

I think all directors should be animators.

I've never directed anything before 'Mad Men,' so I don't feel I have any advice for the other directors.

There's no director or actor that I want to work with more than anyone else, other then maybe Johnny Depp, who I really would love to work with. I don't view any directors or actors above regular people, so I'm just happy to work with anyone, as long as they have talent.

I just realized that I need to be a director - for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to; when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.

One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.

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

I read reviews of critics I respect and feel I can learn something from. Right now there are a lot of bottom-feeder critics who just have access to a computer and don't necessarily have an academic or cinema background that I can detect, so I tend to ignore that and stay with the same top-tier critics that I've come to respect. I like reading a good review - it doesn't have to be favorable, but a well-thought-out one - because I very much appreciate the relationship of directors and critics.

Yeah, the actors really come in as lumps of clay. We're ready to work with the directors and find our way. These guys really come in having done their work.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

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.

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?

Directors should not be forced to advocate anything in their works because of their demographic identity.

I think, a lot of times, directors assume that whatever they get from you the first time, whether it be at an audition or on set, is all that you can bring.

I am sure I am one of 2000 film directors in the world that Tarantino admires.

In the eighties, I was fortunate to be one of the young art directors that Jerry Roach, creative director at JWT New York, took under his wing. He taught me how to use typography more visually, to push against design norms and not to rely on preconceived notions of what something should look like. I learned that nuance is everything and to agonize over the details. I have Jerry to thank for driving plenty of people crazy over the years!

The good thing about recording everyone separately is it gives the directors more control - they can change one character's lines in a scene without having to re-record everybody, and the story changes a lot before the movie comes out.

Wong Kar-wai and Ang Lee are two Asian directors I'm really fond of.

I just follow my nose, and instead of letting someone run my affairs and probably make me wealthy within a matter of years, I've just kept the board of directors down to zero. I make all the decisions, and they can't all be right, and my lifestyle is very expensive, so that means I have to work a lot. It's the opposite side of the coin from sinking back into the recliner and becoming somebody they bury.

As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

Now, I have big-money offers on three movies, and I have director approval. That's kind of scary,' he says. 'No directors have been attached. That's a lot of pressure on me

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.

Directors are like generals, political dictators, aggressive people...And everyone in the film is always grateful if you can tell them what to do.

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.

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian.

I guess I always knew going into the movie that casting that part would be difficult. Oliver just felt likeable. I felt it would be hard to dislike this man. I don't know why, but I'm sure other directors have felt the same when casting him. Oliver is goofy yet formidable, smart but likeable... I didn't want the character of Alex to be nasty or demonised. I wanted him to be struggling with his actions.

I admire directors so much, I find them incredible: they manage such a huge number of people of different characters, think of the money involved.

It's impossible to put your finger on what that is exactly other than protecting the environment that the actors get to find the scenes and build the scenes and invest in them. I think that's key and that's what I've learned from all the great directors I've worked with.

Back when I was looking for my next step and was researching Gannett, I was interested in who was leading the various businesses within the organization: Are there a lot of women and minorities in important, operational roles, senior management and the board of directors?

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head.

I happen to have worked with male directors who don't understand women at all. Not at all. I'm flabbergasted by their ignorance.

I've never played a Dane in a movie. I've had offers to be in Danish movies, including for some good directors, but I either had a job at the time or, when I was available, the movie just didn't happen. Hopefully someday I'll do one.

I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material.

If you work in casting, it's sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors, but it wasn't true with any of the casting people I knew.

The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful. And that was the real disappointment of the time. You'd see great writer-directors in the '90s becoming part of a system where financiers and movie stars could change the material. I came along just before all that happened.