Quotes About Directors

Any filmmaker, big directors, and I'm not dropping any names - I actually have couple names I want to say, but I will not - we have a ratio. Each thing you repeat, my ratio is one to four.Actually some people are ratio one to 34. I know couple directors, big directors, they are just shooting over and over.

I don't want to rescind American directors but I think that European directors in general, because of the size of the nations in Europe are exposed to all different cultures, they can easily travel from one distinct culture to another in a matter of hours - you can drive for two weeks across the United States and you're in the same basic culture - so there is a certain breadth of understanding and sophistication that they bring to it and frankly, in some cases they are less expensive than American directors.

There are times when you work with directors on set, and things are a bit rudderless, and those can be good directors.

There are many directors in the middle range who've made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who've had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enamored of the latter category.

I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt.

I've always thought that as long as directors and casting directors don't see me as just Harry Potter, I'll be OK. People have shown a lot of faith in me, and I owe them a huge debt. They're letting me prove that I'm serious about this.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

Roles came to me. I was very, very lucky in that respect. Great directors, great writers, great producers - they saw something in me that they wanted for their picture or their play or whatever it was, whether it was Edward Albee or whether it was - or Peter Hall, directors. They would come to me, thank God. I was lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Television can become a bit of a treadmill for directors. You come in, nobody knows you, the actors are already doing what they're doing, and you're just one of a number of directors who comes in.

My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I'm pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.

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.

You're not directing an actor toward a thing they can't achieve. Because direction is elusive. When directors hold respect for the various craftsmen and -women who are telling the story, it's the greatest result. I think people do their bravest work when given an elusive canvas.

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.

If you don't take it personally, the partnership between producers and directors is very intimate.

I love being involved in all of the creative stuff; I love talking ideas with directors. Anyone with an imagination can create something fun.

I've never been difficult to anybody or with anybody on a picture. Especially when you're in that nice status of hierarchy of actors and actresses who get to approve directors. Because once you make that choice, it's my belief that the director's boss.

Directors always used to be like the police to me - the enemy, the people to tell me what to do when I didn't want to do it. But I've lived with one for a while now and I guess I can put myself more in their position. You shouldn't be too sympathetic to them.

There are directors, and there are authors. I think I am more of an author than a director.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

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

Julie Taymor. She is my gold standard of stage directors. I think she has a comprehensive knowledge of theatrical form, since she lived in Indonesia, Java, Japan and France. Her knowledge of form is limitless. Whenever I get painted in a corner, I think about what form she would use, because that is what she practices. It's about accessing the theater traditions of the whole world.

I mean, I'm willing to do anything with Chris Chulack - he's one of my favorite directors I've ever worked with, and I just think he's a fantastic man, and a great creator, and a good friend.

I think great directors really respect their actors and vice versa. That mutual respect makes the job fun instead of anything but.

I'm just trying to choose interesting, quirky projects or things with interesting directors or just movies that have a lot of people I like attached to them so I know I'm going to have a good time.

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.

I've got a lot of wonderfully talented, creative directors I've worked with in Texas, but the market we're in, they kind of have to write to that. I think we've done some cool, simple spots. I was very comfortable in Texas, and getting ready to push out into national stuff, try to get to that national-type creative, and then I got sidetracked with this stuff.

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.

Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors. They don't realize that the actor is looking at their faces, anyway.

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

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

I have always firmly believed that every director should be judged solely by their work, and not by their work based on their gender. Hollywood is supposedly a community of forward thinking and progressive people yet this horrific situation for women directors persists. Gender discrimination stigmatizes our entire industry. Change is essential. Gender neutral hiring is essential.

Of course I am a child of European culture. There are a number of great directors from which I learned, but there is nobody in particular I got inspired from.

I think stupidity in business is really an interesting thing. What winds up happening is a disconnect between your company's strategic management and then your more applied on-the-street management. I guarantee with you that the board of directors of most companies has no idea what the costs of hiring people really is in the HR department.

I've figured out what to do so far, but it's always the next thing you come to where the man with the bucket of ice cold water is waiting - whoosh! in your face. That's why you work with directors who know what to tell you to do.

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.

The directors that I end up having a really good time with are the ones that understand the fluidity of the medium and are interested in catching lightning in a bottle.

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.

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

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

Getting back in the directors chair - there's a sense of like doing something every year. It's not like riding a bike, you're always learning new things, you're gonna face new challenges and when you face new challenges you'll have an answer for them.

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.

To televisionize any serious problem, the program directors face the task of making the message 'go down smooth' until the audience is delivered to the commercial.

I worked for John Ford, Howard Hawks, Henry Hathaway, Raoul Walsh - I worked for some real good directors.

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let's put it this way: It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

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.

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?

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Ambiguity in directors is a hard thing to deal with.