Directors Quotes

I love being on sets with very seasoned directors as well as very new directors. Every time is a discovery process. You learn something new every time.

You have to remind casting directors out here that you don't just do one thing. There's a lot of people who do just one thing.

I deal with guys in their 20s and early 30s who are presidents of companies, who are movie directors.

All of the directors I've worked with I have loved and would work with again. I have no favorites.

Do you know what directors go through? It's just hell. Like, why do I work so hard - to think I'm only going to see this movie five times and then never see it again 'cause I'm so sick of it? What is it worth, honestly?

Then I usually leave the choice of the second assistant director and any other assistant directors to the first assistant director, who will choose because he or she is responsible for the conduct and the efficiency of the second assistant directors.

To be honest with you, a lot of directors can be very lazy.

There aren't many American directors here trying to direct a Japanese yakuza film. When you combine that with the fact that I don't speak much Japanese and this was an independent film I was financing myself - people were curious about what I was doing.

Well, this is the second time I've done New Directors.

You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it's like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen.

I have worked with some great directors.

A lot of directors don't know what they want to do. Every director I've seen that was a good director that I've admired knew exactly what he wanted to do. They didn't sit there and think about it.

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

So many directors are solely focused on their own success in Hollywood and multimillion dollar budgets and deals.

You could name the great stars of the silent screen who were finished; the great directors gone; the great title writers who were washed up. But remember this, as long as you live: the producers didn't lose a man. They all made the switch. That's where the great talent is.

I've had really great experiences working with first-time directors. They come at filmmaking with fresh ideas. I've been very lucky that way.

I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do - monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent.

Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.'

So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies.

There are directors who, their direction is high, but then when you challenge it, it crumbles. They can't back up what they're asking.

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

You spend enough time on set as an actor and it's great when a director was at some point an actor or understands acting. They're able to finesse performances out of you that a lot directors can't get.

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

All directors are control freaks and very obsessive. I get the feeling that directors as kids, they all have had a childhood with not too much contact with other kids. They constructed their own reality and they continue to do it. It's a funny breed, directors.

On the one hand, young theatre directors were coming to television theatre, because they wanted to get closer to the cinema, despite having studied and worked for the theatre.

Twelve years on sets watching directors, I've taken a bit from everybody and rejected a lot.

What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time.

Directors have to push me. I have to be pushed up. Not all the time, but often.

Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.