Quotes About Directors

I don't have any problem working with first-time directors because all directors have to start somewhere and all great directors have had a first film. So, if you take the view that you don't want to work with a first-timer, you might miss out on a fantastic opportunity.

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.

It's turned into a world of amateurs. There are amateur actors making millions of dollars, amateur cinematographers, amateur directors... Jesus, these amateur directors can get deals for anything. Another comic book? Oh, very good.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.

The key is working with great directors. A film is so many different people and all their talents, but particularly the directors, because of the idiosyncrasies of that person.

The director's who want to be innovative use the DVD as a tool to see what people have done in the past and you have other people who will actually take from better directors and that makes them better directors.

The thing I love about working with first-time directors is that it's always quite shocking how little difference there is between them and directors who've been directing all their lives.

I've turned down good directors before because I knew the part didn't speak to me and I've worked with less talented directors before because the part I had such passion for.

What I've grown to hate in my 'old age' is shouting directors. I find anybody who screams and shouts to be difficult to work with... especially because the people who scream and shout tend to do it at runners, and not at the main actors. They make a great amount of noise and it's often at someone who is an easy target. I love working with people who are calm, even if my role is peripheral. I like people who realise that this is just a film... that we're not going over the top in No Man's land and screaming for our lives. There's just nothing to be gained by volume.

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.

There are a lot of directors out there that don't like to deal with actors, I think. Many of them have said something like, in the future they will actually manipulate the actors on their computers. But don't believe all this.

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them.

I love the work, I love being in front of the camera and working with actors and directors and creating something. For me, it's like learning everyday.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

We learnt a lot because we got in with real choreographers who tell you what they need from a song, because a song has to advance the story. Then real directors like Mike Nichols tell you where you can have 'B themes' and 'C themes', and we go oh yes, B themes and C themes! So we were taught in the finest school amongst the finest people. And also by the school of experience.

I've worked with a lot of great directors and often times they solicit your ideas.

It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world.

I've certainly worked with really great directors who haven't acted.

Different directors have different techniques in the use of films. Cronenberg is very different in the way he works with film, and how he takes the audience into his films is different than how Peter Jackson would do that or Jon Stewart. So, if you go between those artists, you shift gears and you kind of fall into the working method of that film.

We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, "well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct".

I always wanted to direct. Directing is a lot more of a commitment though, a lot more time. I like directors who do very few takes, they know what they want.

The bigger the budget, the more people that you have to coordinate and it's not easy to do that always because, not only do people have trouble communicating in that way, but often there are internal disagreements and everybody is not necessarily on the same page. Even in a big-budget movie with famous actors and directors, everybody could be on a completely different page. The director has to figure out a way of getting everybody on the same page, more or less, and keeping them there.

I have always been a great fan of Peter Chan and many other great directors who specialize in anything outside of action.

Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.

There are only so many hilarious actors so when they cross-pollinate, people assume it's always the same actors and directors.

I've been very lucky to work with a lot of amazingly supportive directors.

There are some actresses who cannot function on the set without having a close relationship with their directors. Their way of communicating with the director is through intimacy. It doesn't necessarily have to do with any physical act; it has more to do with achieving a closeness that they find very valuable.

Sometimes, with directors, you have to take what they say and translate it in your head, into something that makes sense to you, because you're speaking two different languages.

When you can sit down with a plain sheet of paper in front of you and make some notes, and, little by little, you see it take shape and become a concept for a movie or a TV show. That's a real thrill. You watch it go from notes on a paper to a meeting with writers and directors and actors. I can't think of anything that's more exciting.

Cable TV has become where the best actors, writers and directors have gone to work because they are allowed to do character-driven stories.

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?

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

One of my first jobs was in a soap opera, five days a week. And what I found is, although there are different directors coming in and different crews, you just lived in your character. It's the nature of the story, the ongoing story, and it can get deeper and deeper.

As an actor, I have casting issues. I'm a minority. I don't have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I'm not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers.

Learn how to draw. It's the basis of what we [animation directors] do. Keep a sketchbook. Try making a very simple little film. Try and tell a story clearly and entertainingly. Study the way people move and animate move. Observe all you can, and try and capture that simply in a few lines on paper.

All the studios are owned by multinational corporations, which are not usually bastions of the left. So all the actors, writers, and directors - or at least a great majority of them - live in fear because we're all insecure, we all want that next job, we all want to be loved, and we don't want to piss off some studio chief who won't hire us for the next movie.

There's a paraphrase about Orson Welles saying: "Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else." I've been very lucky... before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.

I feel like some of the best talent is on TV right now, with the writing, acting and great directors.

I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I write novels I also use techniques which can run counter to those that a novelist would use.

If the United States is to produce a nation of investors-as we must if we are to gain financial world-leadership-it is imperative that boards of directors be so constituted as to adequately represent the interests and inspire the complete confidence of investors of moderate substance.

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'm not the kind of actor that gets crazy with [directors'] names, what draws me toward a project is the material itself.

Some directors involve waiting, and if you want to work with that particular director you're going to have to hang around.

Obviously, I've been very lucky in general in my career, but I feel that I've been very lucky in terms of having directors come along at the right times who have taken me to the next level of where I needed to be.

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 do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can't because they can't face it.