Director Quotes
-
American Graffiti was the first movie where the director let me have any input. It was the first time anyone ever listened to me. George thought my character should have a crew cut, but I wasn't happy with that idea. I'd always had pretty long hair back then - in college, particularly - so I told George my character should wear a cowboy hat. George thought about it and he remembered a bunch of guys from Modesto, California, who cruised around, like my character, and wore cowboy hats, so it turned out that it actually fit the movie.
-
It all has to do with the director, the captain of the ship. He sets the pace, the mood. If the director is quiet, the set is quiet. If the director is loud, then everybody has to be louder to be heard.
-
I think drug movies free the director to make intense films.
-
I really love the experience of moving things around, in terms of being a director.
-
You are the executive director and screenwriter of your life.
-
The longer I've been a director, the less I have to direct.
-
The lead actor, along with the director, plays a big role in what the vibe will be on set, and that's a huge responsibility.
-
In Hong Kong, in our generation that started out in the 1970s, being a director wasn't a big deal. We didn't even have director's chairs. We weren't particularly well paid. The social standing of a film director wasn't that high. It was a sort of a plebeian job, a second or third grade one. And the studio heads are always practical, there's never any fawning because someone is a director. There's very little snobbery about one's position as a director. The only ones people treated differently were those that were also stars; or the directors who also owned their companies.
-
But I am very confident that David Pleat, the director of football or whatever his title is now days - I am very confident that he, with all his media commitments around the world, knows the market place.
-
If I were to be cast as Cyrano or a Connecticut prep-school teacher or a gay boutique owner, it would only happen if some director I had worked with in the past said, 'Why don't we give Rispoli a shot at it?'
-
As a director, you always want things to look good. You're always trying to make things look tidy. That's what we're all trained to do.
-
'The Best Man' was my first feature film, and I didn't want to be known as a director who only does romantic comedies.
-
I got to work with Robert DeNiro once and it was a strange experience. Gwyneth Paltrow and I were doing Great Expectations movie together and we were complaining about what a mediocre film experience it was. DeNiro showed up on set and all of a sudden the director got better, the director of photography got better - everybody got more interested and excited. DeNiro isn't waiting for other people to create the environment that he wants, he brings it along with him.
-
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.
-
You never know as a director what other directors do. Because you don't get to see what they do.
-
My father was a psychiatrist, the medical director of a mental hospital in Scotland, and when I was a student, I took vacation jobs there as a nursing assistant. So I did get to see mental illness, but I don't remember conversations about mental conditions. My father was a cheerful man with a robust attitude to such things.
-
If we have come up with a creative decision and somebody comes up with another idea, you do have to get into the depths of it and ask: "Is it a better idea? Or is it a different idea?" That can be hard. But that's the type of conversation the director and I will have, or as part of our creative groups. So with that in mind, it's hard to keep a budget in line. It's like in life, if you've ever built anything for the first time you're usually better at it the second time.
-
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.
-
It doesn't matter if I have experienced actors alongside or novices. It doesn't matter if the director is one film old or a hundred. All I'm interested in is doing justice to the role.
-
When I work, I work very hard. So I look to work with people who have that level of dedication. And I depend on that from everyone. From the director to my crews that I work with.
-
One of my biggest fears as a director is that everything is taking too long on camera. The actor saying their lines, the silence between lines, the length of time it takes to walk from A to B. So you try it at different speeds and then see what sticks in the edit room.
-
I would be a terrible director, I could never write anything. One of my great strengths is that I know all of my weaknesses.
-
If you have a script that's not great, if you have a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who's not good, never are you going to have a good movie.
-
In Germany, actors tend to be more laid-back and take orders from the director: 'Tell me what you want.' I'm more into collaboration. So are Americans.
