Directors Quotes

As a director, my job is to protect. I protect scripts, actors, cameramen, designers.

I do like being surprised by directors and producers and being offered parts I would never have considered, including parts that aren't necessarily obvious but which would test me.

My philosophy is, 'Show up, shut up, and do your job,' and if you do it to the satisfaction of your director and the public, you're likely to be able to do it again.

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.

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.

I always wanted to direct. I always saw myself as a director.

It's always fun to get to do independent film because I believe that that's the life blood of film. It's about writers and directors who truly have their own vision, and that's hard.

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

I don't blame any director for wanting to do something more commercial. That's all part of the business. I certainly have done it, as an actor.

People come up to me and say "Steve, what is film editing?" And I say "How should I know? You're the director.

Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.

It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't.

I usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time.

It's great the way the old-time directors used to manipulate the hell out of you. You see someone dying and all of a sudden a ghost would come out and they go walking hand in hand up the stairway.

I think they're really linked. I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

I love Ben Affleck so much. He's an amazing director.

I was thrown in the deep end at 18 when I got cast in a movie that I didn't audition for. The director just sort of found me and put me in a film, so the decision was really made for me.

I'm more prone to anarchy than I am to control - even though I'm a film director.

It's either because of the number of times the scholar puts the boot into Peter Jackson the director of The Lord of the Rings films or is making a point they have never heard of.

When you're a screenwriter, it's like being a mechanic. You open the hood of the story, the director is the driver, and he says, "What do you think? It's a little tough."

Great directors turn in mediocre work and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know.

Not many French producers work the American way. In France, the director decides everything, he has final cut. I'm trying to do things differently, without the Luc Besson solution.

I always feel like the less you say when you're making a movie, as a director, is the best. That means everything's going great.

[Director Richard Tanne] was inspired by their [Barack and Michelle Obama] flirtation, and their connection. That's not normal with politicians who are married - they usually look forced or awkward.

Sometimes when you're doing a comedy, the director will yell out "alts" and then the director gets the first laugh.

Because of 'The Birds' and 'Marnie' I was, as the expression goes, hot in Hollywood and producers and directors wanted to hire me.

I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.

Directors tend to be more underrated than overrated because it's a quiet job and people don't really understand it.

I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.

I've wanted to make movies for so long. I learned most of what I know from director commentaries and behind the scenes featurettes and criterions.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

I wanted to work on a cable show and with a writer/director because that's a much more fulfilling and freeing experience, as an actor.

Certain directors are known for a certain kind of beauty; it becomes their signature.

All directors should have to act and all actors should have to direct, so that they can understand all these key things that come into play with whether you can meet your day.

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control.

I'm not a famous director yet, and I'm not into fame. I like to just work. As a director, as an actor, whatever people consider me is fine with me.

As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic.

As a director, it's my job to provoke, and when people decided 'The Room' be called a phenomenon, or whatever you call it, it's fine with me.

Directors are denied a great pleasure, which is that of being on stage.

Developing films with directors, developing films with actors, is a poor percentage play for a screenwriter.

I worked for a lot of directors.

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 would be a terrible director, I could never write anything. One of my great strengths is that I know all of my weaknesses.

I don’t want to be an editor! I don’t want to direct; I’d be a horrible director. I don’t want to write - I have a “story by” credit on one film I did. And I don’t want to edit at all.

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

I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

I have no complaints. I've worked with worse directors in my career.

The thing is, I think as a director or a writer or whatever, you have to have a vision. And you have to be maybe sometimes too early, somewhere.

Normally, I rely heavily on my director to massage me out of my actor comfort zones.

I cherish each director that I have. I want to be maneuvered out of my comfort zones. I don't have the time to prepare.