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Directors Quotes

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Directors Quotes

“When I left the University of Iowa and made the decision to come to Rutgers, I said to my athletic director, as both of us stood there crying, 'I wish I could just take Iowa to the East Coast. That would be the best of all worlds.' Of course, I couldn't. I have the best of all worlds now by being at Rutgers, being in this part of the country and being able to embrace and receive the great prestige that is part of the Big Ten.”

“A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Periguex: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, truffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish?"”

“It's not hard to understand why an accomplished director like Gus Van Sant (whose most recent success, Good Will Hunting, gave him mainstream clout) would be interested in making this film. The lure of an exact remake presents a tremendous challenge. Unfortunately, it was undoubtedly a lot more stimulating for Van Sant and his crew to make Psycho than it is for an audience to watch it. Curiosity is going to be one of the primary reasons why people pay money to see this movie; boredom will be the predominant result.”

“Any advice I could give to female directors would be the same as for males: There will be endless difficulties, some seemingly defeating, on your way. That's a given. Just wipe out the very notion of stress. Concentrate on your actors. Obsess about your story and the world it is anchored in. Deal with the hundreds of down-to-earth issues [around] the existence of your film. At some point, everything will be ripe. And you wouldn't be able to stop your film from coming to life even if you wanted to.”

“I'd made pretty clear to the people at Paramount and Dreamworks that, if they wanted Lemony Snicket to comment, he would be completely horrified by the entire film. And as long as they understood that, it was okay. I'm not much of a fan of DVD commentaries myself, so this was my way of getting revenge, in a sense, for all the puffed-up directors and stars who talk endlessly about the self-aggrandizing minutiae of making a movie.”

“If a director says he doesn't care how many people see his films at all, I simply don't believe him. Otherwise why would he bother to make the film? The only explanation would be that it would be an act of masturbation. I think that every creator is looking for a receptor. He's looking for an audience. There are two parts of the equation: a creator and, necessarily, the receiver of the work. It's the same thing for a painter who wants his paintings to be seen.”

“My advice to other female directors would be to pay no heed to naysayers. Women can be united in the fact that there has always been someone in our lives who has told us "it can't be done" or "there is only so much you can do." We are constantly encouraged to think that being born a woman means we were born with limited choices and compromised dreams.”

“I love telling truthful honest stories. I suppose I'd love the opportunity to be a superhero within a realistic dramatic piece. It would have opportunity for humor too of course. And ideally I would be the writer/director? (Though I suppose if I was, it is POSSIBLE I would give myself a meaty but smaller part so I could focus on the latter of my duties... Maybe).”

“Stained is about a lonely bookshop keeper, and her past comes back to haunt her. I play a femme fatale, schizophrenic serial killer. They offered me the part and I was like, "I'm just curious why you thought I would be perfect for this role," and the director (Karen Lam) said, "You have this look that, when you're smiling, you're really sweet, but when you're not smiling, you look like you could kill somebody."”

“God sends such purgations to you, directors of consciences, that you may acquire the science of the saints and the art of directing souls. You will suffer also in another way. Love will be your executioner. Let it do its work; it knows how. In this martyrdom we have need of extraordinary grace and strength; but God will bestow it. Without this divine help it would be impossible to bear up.”

“I don't think Roger Ebert has ever mentioned a screenplay. He assigns every auctorial move to the director, which makes some sense since the director has run a one-off game, but if Hamlet were written last year and had been only performed once as a film, and it didn't come off well on screen for whatever reason, it would be gone forever as a literary work, and never would have been considered as one.”

“I hadn't studied theatre and I hadn't studied actor training or anything, but I did have a sense of movement and composition, and what the final product would be like, but luckily I had friends who were good actors, who would help me get them, who would get themselves to the place where a good director should get them to build characters.”

“One of the first decisions I made, as the director of "Hide and Seek," was that our film would be silent and use underscoring of original music that I was planning on composing. The decision was mostly predicated on knowing how time consuming the editing of dialogue can be and given the various locations we shot in, I didn't want to worry about having to mix room tones in such a short amount of time.”

“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.”

“And so as a director, as a leader, and myself as a director and a leader, I kind of try to make sure that we hold onto the vision and kind of corral it, but by the time you finish whatever the project is, a TV show, a series, a movie, a stage show, it should be a product of what all those people can do, and therefore, it can never be what you imagined it would be in the beginning.”

“This is many, many years ago. It was shortly after "Starman" I think. I don't know how close I was to getting the part. I met with [director] Penny Marshall and that's one that I knew would be a hit. It just felt hit-ish. But it's like you go to a store and you see a jacket and you go "I love that jacket" and you try it on and it's too big or too small for you and it's the only one they have. For some reason that part just didn't fit me.”