Best 1750 quotes in «directors quotes» category

Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a shot... but if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don't stand a shot. It's very rare-almost never-that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay.

Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be.

Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.

Sexism is real and it persists in film and television. I've seen female directors openly undermined by male cinematographers in front of the entire crew

She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.

Simon Collinson, of digital publisher Canelo and über-cool Aussie mag The Lifted Brow, is our digital producer; Sarah Shin, Verso's comms director, is helping us out with press publicity; Soraya Gilanni, who mainly does production and set design for films and commercials, is our art director.

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.

Snoop Scorsese, that's my director name.

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.

So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.

So I started to learn Russian and I was one of those probably way too eager, annoying young actor kids who was trying to change all my lines to Russian, much to the dismay of the director and Nic Cage.

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

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

Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.

Some directors, like Stevens [George Stevens], shoot full circle, 360 degrees, and that's what's right for them. I generally shoot at about a seven to one ratio. But part of that is because I've worked on every screenplay, so I'm further along in the visual concept.

Somebody said that I'm a bit like a sponge, grabbing things here and there, soaking stuff up. [As a director] you have to be, really.

Some friends of mine who are actors feel directing shuts them down and kills all their impulses, but the worst thing for me is if I feel a director hasn't noticed.

Some directors are like it's their... nothing can change, nothing can move. I like collaborating, even when an extra has an idea, I like to bring to really have collaboration.

Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.

Some directors are comfortable with music. Some feel comfortable discussing and talking and operating in a musical language. Others don't engage so much.

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.

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

Some directors have just one way of working; you either have to adhere to it or you don't.

Some of the screen's best moments were realized because a director went against all reason, all logic. No matter how incredible a story seems, it can be made credible. If you feel an insane idea strongly enough, you've usually got something.

Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right.

Some people feel like you need to have a very specialized understanding of music to have the authority to talk about it. They are such good directors that it's perfectly possible to have conceptual and directorial and storytelling conversations about music without needing to know all the technical pieces.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

Sometimes directors feel like they have to justify that hat that they are wearing they've got on as a director, and they come in and they tweak and interfere.

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.'

Sometimes I call directors. Sometimes I just meet with them. It just happens. It's not that I'm pushy. It comes naturally. But I go ahead. I don't stay in my armchair, waiting for the phone to ring.

Sometimes directors may not give you words, you know? They may not talk at all! You've just got to use your radar to figure out how you can get to the center and not lose yourself, but still be directed at the same time.

Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

Sometimes I'll go for something more because of the story, or more because of the director. But, generally, I have to feel like it's something that I have a real sympathy for - a person that I can completely go, "Oh, wow, oh, I'm there." Otherwise I don't feel like I will be able to pull it off at all. I know I haven't done everything very well in the past; some things have worked and some things haven't. But I need to feel like I can feel about the person, understand that person, I suppose.

Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again.

Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable.

Sometimes the director will want you to write about the character, sometimes he'll want you to live in the location that the character is from or something like that, but I don't usually make a lot of notes or anything like that.

(Sometimes when) someone's directing for the first time, they're afraid to include everyone - they have to prove they're the director.

Sometimes the shots serve as homages to other movies and other directors, like Hitchcock.

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.

Sometimes what you lose in the time it takes to let an actor do something that you don't like as a director, you gain in not shutting them down creatively by telling them their idea sucks.

Sometimes you have to say the words exactly how they are on the page, but sometimes when you improv, it only helps to get across what's on the page, and I just love working with directors who allow that.

Sometimes you can't even find the director on a movie set. Sometimes you don't want to find the director on a movie set.

Sometimes you don't need to explain how you care and love someone so much, but I really love him as a person and as a director. I wanted to be perfect for Michael Mann. I wanted to give the best of my best of my best. I don't know if I did, but I was touched by him. He's totally inspirational.

Sometimes writers or writer-directors can get nuts about words, but you know and I know that it's the thought process behind the words that motivates the words, that conveys real communication and meaning.

Some very famous directors have started in the mail room, which is just getting inside the studio, getting to know people, getting to know the routine.

So, we come out to Los Angeles. And we met with every network. We met with show runners, directors, writers, everything. And what we had an idea for, they didn't like. And what they had an idea for, we didn't like. So, we went home.

So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.

So when I got the chance to do my first talk show, 50 years ago last month, I never had any writers. There was no budget - it was just me and the camera and my friend who was the director. I talked about what I'd done that week.