Director Quotes

• I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

  

  Al Pacino
  • Up
  • Style
  • Movies

• I learned that as a director, you're around all these talented people, so you have this window that all these really good ideas can come in to help your movie, so you're crazy to close them. You need to be inspiring people, engaging people. There are lots of people who are really good at their jobs but might not know or feel like they want to come up to people and get them to participate and want to do their best.

  

  Ben Affleck
  • People
  • Up
  • Good

• When you grow up in the [film] industry, the director is your father. You follow your father's lead, but you make your own way.

  

  Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Up
  • Father
  • Industry

• When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can’t be sold on its merits. I’d be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. Remember, I’m the kid who couldn’t play competitive games. I’d much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition.

  

  Yvon Chouinard
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Remember

• I never thought being the producer was being the dictator. It means being the director and being the coach. It's a way of keeping everybody focused on the goal, and also having final say. Everybody can be in the same car, but somebody has to drive.

  

  Paul Stanley Kiss
  • Coach
  • Drive
  • Dictator

• When asked if I miss being in government, I usually try to lighten the moment by responding that I awake most days, read the paper, and then observe that, 'It's yet another great day to be the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.'

  

  Michael Hayden
  • Government
  • Paper
  • Observe

• Ever director has at least 10 bad films in them.

  

  Robert Rodriguez Chingon
  • Films
  • Director

• I don't come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.

  

  Abdellatif Kechiche
  • Job
  • Acting
  • Background

• We get hit with the 'jukebox musical' label, but book authors Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and director Des McAnuff accomplished a 50-50 split between music and drama, ... The music is very important, but the history of the group makes it a great piece of theater.

  

  Bob Gaudio
  • Music
  • Book
  • History

• Obviously I would love to work with all these great directors like the Coen Brothers, Tarantino. Robert Rodriguez is a dream director of mine.

  

  Monica Raymund
  • Directors
  • Brothers
  • Mine

• I just adored Peter Medak, the director. He's such a character, but he was so much fun. Some directors come in and they truly get angry about things.Peter was still in a fantastic mood. He's a delightful person. He threw a big party at the end of the pilot, which was so sweet. And his wife is an opera singer. He's just a very warm, crazy beautiful individual.

  

  Brigid Brannagh
  • Character
  • Peter Medak
  • Fantastic mood

• And one of the funnest things was watching what they did before the director called action and after the director called cut. And they'd keep their hands in the puppets, they'd stay in character, and then they'd start goofing around with each other and be off of script, and it would get quite blue.

  

  Brian Henson
  • Character
  • Action
  • Puppets

• After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: “She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!”

  

  Ava Gardner
  • Hands
  • Director
  • Sensational

• Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.

  

  Ethan Hawke
  • Imagination
  • Films
  • Marry

• That is a big turn-on for me, a director who knows what he's doing and what he wants, and knows when he's gotten what he wants.

  

  Morgan Freeman
  • Director

• I think that what kind of is making this different is the creative group of us that has come together and we're all kind of on the same page working towards the same goal. So it is a real collaborative effort of our hearts more than it is oh you have the writer, you have the director, the producer, whatever.

  

  Boti Bliss
  • Different
  • Goal
  • Creative

• I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn't be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems.

  

  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
  • Problems
  • Director
  • Warrior

• A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.

  

  Michael Winner
  • People
  • Inspiring
  • Filmmaker

• The smartest thing a director can do is surround himself with really good people.

  

  Scott Ellis
  • Director
  • Surround
  • Smartest

• If I weren't a director, I would want to be a film composer.

  

  Steven Spielberg
  • Director
  • Film composer

• Rob Reiner is a teddy bear. He's hell delicious. He's a really good director. He's a great soul. In the movie business, I would call him a movie mom. The only person I hold in equal esteem is Clint Eastwood. Now I have worked with a lot of terrific directors, and I don't mean to be putting any of them below their own station, but these two, I relish working with them.

  

  Morgan Freeman
  • Soul
  • Teddy Bear
  • Rob Reiner

• Any director who comes into a revival owes a great deal to the original director. If I know the backbone works, it gives me, as a director, much more freedom to bring something new to it or try something different.

  

  Scott Ellis
  • Great
  • Different
  • Freedom

• When I was a kid it was much more difficult. You're trying to understand what the director wants. It's a learning process. Now, you go in and it's more of a collaboration.

  

  Moises Arias
  • Learning
  • Difficult
  • Collaboration

• I don't watch many films. I just make sure my directors are really good. I will work even with a debut director, but the one-hour narration of the script should be mind-blowing.

  

  Suriya
  • Director
  • Script
  • Mind-blowing

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