Famous Quotes & Sayings

Tom Scully sent an e-mail directing that we not respond to these requests and warning that the consequences of insubordination were extremely severe, ... I took that to mean that if I sent the responses, they would go ahead and fire me.

Katie Aselton

Part of the process of acting in a film that you're also directing is really trusting the people around you to capture your vision, which hopefully you have communicated well to them.

Rick Rubin

We felt Johnny's presence during the whole process through to the end. It felt like he was directing the proceedings, and I know that the musicians all felt that as well... More than once, Fergie and I would look at each other and say 'Johnny would love this,' because it was so good and so different from anything we'd done before, we knew he would be excited by what was happening.

Akira Kurosawa

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied... That's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.

Akira Kurosawa

Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.

Akira Kurosawa

With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this.

Billy Wilder

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

Bruce Beresford

There are some good writer/directors in the U.S. as well. In general the writing and directing tend to be separated but I bet that most of the directors have a big effect on the scripts. These days the studios tend to bring in hordes of writers.

We often hear of a male director directing a great indie and immediately being offered the next huge comic book movie. Rarely, if ever, does this happen to a woman.

Laurie Metcalf

One of the hardest things about directing is just to be patient and remind yourself that you've been in Week 1 of a rehearsal process yourself, and you know what it feels like.

Guy Gavriel Kay

I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

Laurieann Gibson

Choreography is amazing. I'm still a dancer, yet I transitioned into choreography then as a Creative Director. All of these creative elements are brought out of being a dancer. Directing is something that comes out of understanding movement and choreography. Directing movement is directing a dance piece.

Kenneth Branagh

I'm very conscious of the fact the directing career has taken some odd turns. Maybe there's enough bulk where I'm now pigeonholed in the 'eclectic box.'

Kim Fields

Directing at seven-and-a-half months pregnant was lots of fun.

I worked as a production assistant on a couple of films, and finally, I got a job at an animation studio as an editor. After that, work begat work. I got into directing music videos and commercials.

I think people forget that a lot of directing is just real management of the size of a production.

Gary Sinise

I started as an actor. I started directing because Steppenwolf needed another strong director.

Gary Sinise

Before discovering theater, I was sloughing off and didn't have any passion for school. Then I couldn't get enough. All of a sudden, I was getting good parts in all of these plays. I just loved it. I started getting A's in acting, directing and technical theater. I found something that clicked.

The first seven years of my life, me, my mom and dad and my four older siblings lived in a suburb of Stockholm, and my mom was very active with directing theater. So I basically grew up at the theater on the floors of the shows, so I was really surrounded with music at a young age.

Lori Petty

I think many actresses want to be famous and want to be the prettiest, and that wasn't my trek. I was thinking, 'I gotta get out of here... how do I get out of here?' I like acting, but I like directing more.

Lori Petty

Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm not being mean to them, but they can't hear you. I don't have a husband, and so I'm not really attuned to it, but I didn't know that they could not really hear you. Like, I'm talking, and they just walk away.

Karan Johar

I am incapable of directing a film like 'Agneenath.' I can do only what I am good at, so I would have been the worst choice to direct it. It has aggression, action and an inherent violence in it - things I am not capable of directing in my films.

James Franco

There's a tendency, when you're directing yourself, not to give the performance as much care, because you feel like there's too much focus on yourself, or that all these people are just standing around setting everything up, waiting for you.

James Franco

I guess what I enjoy most is directing, because it incorporates all aspects of filmmaking. Directing is in the same line as acting - both are popularity contests, and in both you're trying to tell a story through the film as a medium.

With the newer guys it's just simply being able to meet the ball in the center of the racket and directing it over the net. With other guys we go beyond that and start thinking about placement, adjusting the pace and the spin.

On the last day, I wound up doing everything from carting flowers into the house to directing traffic.

James Burrows

On 'Taxi,' I had the great fortune of directing many wonderful episodes, none more classic than Reverend Jim's driving test. It was maybe the funniest show I did.

Harmony Korine

When I'm directing films, I mostly try to create an environment on set that mimics what's in my mind as to the tone and feel of things. I try to create a place where you feel that anything's possible.

Mark Waters

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.'

Scott Aukerman

I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did 'Reno 911!' for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the 'Star Trek' thing.

Tom Hooper

The hardest part of directing is the choosing. Unlike an actor who can do a variety of work, it is a year of your life, you can't afford to get it wrong.

Billy Crystal

I was a film-directing major at NYU. I'm still not sure why I became a directing major, when I was really an actor and a comedian, but there was something that drew me to doing that.