Film Director Quotes & Sayings

I had a hard time watching Wolf Creek. It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking. — Roger Ebert

If a film is very clever and well-written, that's what gives you freedom as a director. — Patrice Leconte

I always felt more like a girl than a boy, I don't know. Music was very important to me, movies were not important. I was not dreaming of becoming a film director. — Lukas Moodysson

In 1913, the noted German actor and director Paul Wegener was making a film in Prague when he heard the legend of Rabbi Loew, who created a golem to protect the inhabitants of the Prague ghetto from persecution. — Kage Baker

Well, I think there was a time when I first started that there was such a thing called 'a woman's film' and there were certain scripts that women would make. But I think that's changed a lot now. I think that if a woman director walks into a room with a script, it doesn't really matter what the subject matter is, or the genre is, so long as the financiers feel that the woman has the skills to make the film — Gurinder Chadha

Film work can be very interesting, but it also can be awfully boring because who creates the film? The actors? No. It is the director. It's his piece of work. — Max Von Sydow

Movies are a director's medium, and they end up getting less credit than actors. They get the flak if the movie doesn't do well, and the actor walks away with most of the credit if the film does well. — Ranbir Kapoor

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould. — Leander Paes

When somebody who makes movies for a living - either as an actor, writer, producer or director - lives to be a certain age, you have to admire them. It is an act of courage to make a film - a courage for which you are not prepared in the rest of life. It is very hard and very destructive. But we do it because we love it. — John Carpenter

My father's films are often very slow for the modern audiences, which are used to a lot of editing. It's the audience that watches the film instead of the director dictating the reaction he wants from you. — Isabella Rossellini

I think doing something creative is the most important thing to me, and I think it's probably just good for the soul for anyone, whatever it is. You don't have to be a film director - you can do gardening or something - but I think everyone needs to create something. — Ricky Gervais

When I made my first film, I didn't think of it as directing, so it wasn't like I set out to become a director. — Kathryn Bigelow

As for Tenacious D, of course it could work as a full length movie; all it requires is a great writer and great director with an ability to think outside of conventional film comedy. — David Cross

The Indiana Jones films have a built in Disney connection, as director Steven Spielberg sent his sound designers down to Disneyland to record Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to provide a soundtrack for the second film's mine chase scene! — The Imagineers

The film was semi-autobiographical. Director Mahesh Bhatt based it on his relationship with actress Parveen Babi. — Anupama Chopra

I used to love Woody Allen but feel he's become a hack as a director. 'Bullets Over Broadway' is the only film of his I've enjoyed in the last 10 years. — Douglas Wood

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out. — Nick Harkaway

I'm the most experienced cinematographer in this medium, so there's no point in having that extra conversation in the middle of the loop. You're making the film in relation to what's happening now, and you can't really affect what's happening now. It's not like you're in control of anything in front of the camera. If you're calling yourself the director and you're not the cinematographer, I think you're kidding yourself. — David Douglas

I was the enemy of the major studio. I believed in one man - one film. I believed one man should make the film. And I believed the director should be that one man. One man should do it - I didn't give a damn who. I just couldn't accept art as a committee. I could only accept art as an extension of an individual. — Frank Capra

Me and Kirby are very collaborative and it changes from film to film. The first project we worked on together, Derrida, we co-directed. The last film Outrage, I was the producer and he was the director. This film was much more of a collaboration - he is the director and I am the producer - but this is a film by both of us. — Amy Ziering

Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Series, or Movies Starring John Travolta Before Pulp Fiction - it is almost impossible to choose a single film for worst movie of all time. But strangely, I do have a nomination and I believe it is actually the worst movie ever made. It is Boxing Helena. The director is David Lynch's daughter, and the film comes with the almost insane-making faults that the family connection might imply. — Andrew O'Hagan

Originally a record producer more or less hired a bunch of professionals to participate in a recording session, the performers and the technicians, and a music director was put in charge. That directly related to a film producer's job. — Tony Visconti

I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I don't like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesn't get second-guessed you're looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, you're not. I've got an advanced degree in that lesson. — William Monahan

They say that theater is the actor's medium, television is the writer's medium and film is the director's medium, and it's really true. — Charlie Hunnam

I never feel like a smug or a smart-alec film director, and there are plenty of those around. — Martin McDonagh

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand. — Gary Oldman

I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there. — Kim Cattrall

I think the whole nostalgia for the forty year gap for [Sylvester] Stallone was bigger than the movie [Creed], but it's good because the movie still gets recognized with Stallone's involvement. I'm sure the director [Ryan Coogler] is still proud of his film, but it's very hard to nominate a director. — Bun B.

As a director, or just a film fan who wants to enjoy the festival, Cannes is the worst place to be. But it must be a paradise for distributors and importers. — Bong Joon-ho

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story. — Donnie Yen

My tutor was a film director on the side, and she introduced me to film. She then put me in one of her short films, and it came out of that. That's when I fell in love with the process of making a film. After that, I was about 15 and I was like, "This is what I've gotta do." So, I started taking acting lessons, and then I applied to college to do acting. I got an agent, and it all just happened. — Eve Hewson

[The director's idea for the film was:] A young American or English girl goes to Tuscany to visit English expatriates. She is on a mission to lose her virginity. That's a mission easily accomplished, if that's the only mission. The story had to be more complicated than that. Because there is so little happening dramatically, there had to be something to keep you curious. — Susan Minot

To have a director that loves his actors is something that you can see in the film and in the fruits of that labor. You can see that translated in the film. When you watch such movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes. — Vin Diesel

If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director. — William Monahan

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. — Anonymous

Ultimately, as a director, you try and tell people where to look, but unlike film or television, where you force them to look at something, you can't control it completely. — Jason Moore

I think TV is much more the writer's medium and film is about the director and their vision and how you can collaborate with them and see that through to the end. They are so different. — Patrick Dempsey

I really ought to try and make a film that's a bit more cynical. But I don't think I'd know how to do it. I think what it is, is that if you're a film director, you're basically there because you enjoy manipulating people's emotions. — Nigel Cole

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have. — Michael Haneke

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. — Dick Wolf

If you don't get it right, what's the point? — Michael Cimino

In theatre, there's the director, the writer, and below them the actor. In film, it's the actors who are most important. That goes against the grain for me. — Anne-Marie Duff

I didn't know I was a good director, and I mean that sincerely. I had done a film a long time ago called 'Cold Around the Heart.' Nobody saw it, and it didn't turn out the way I wanted to. — John Ridley

I have worked with a lot of really great women directors: Ana Kokkinos; Cate Shortland, who just recently directed a film called 'Lore;' another director, Rachel Perkins - she's an Aboriginal director, and I've worked with her three times now, and she gave me my first film role, actually, back in 1997. — Deborah Mailman

It's not that much of a difference. Basically, your job is the same as a film director. It's a triangle between creativity, money, and time. But they don't really change. You're ultimately trying to get the most creativity and time with the money that you have. — Darren Aronofsky

I'll be in # Jharkhand along with Kaustav Narayan Niyogi, who is directing the film and my director of photography for location hunting. I want to lock the locations before Christmas as everyone goes into vacation mode after that, — Pooja Bhatt

The way I see it, when I go out as an actor, it should be on a type of film I'm never going to do as a director. — Edward Burns

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position. — Gary Oldman

Actors are the flowers of the film, of the set, and of the director. The term 'Flowers of the Screen' holds a deep meaning. — Kim Jee-woon

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it. — Aaron Johnson

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that. — John Frankenheimer

To go into more specifics regarding actors, whether they're from Korea or the U.S., all actors know if they are loved by the director. When they feel that love from the director, they respond by giving a great performance on camera. Also, everyone on set - the crew, the actors - they were aware of the film's message and its broad theme, so these big issues were never discussed on set. — Kim Jee-woon

I've learnt so much from every film and every director - a new perspective, a greater appreciation of the art. — Sally Menke

I never thought of becoming a director. When I was twelve, the passage from silent film to the talkies had an impact on me - I still watch silent films. — Alain Resnais

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film. — Paul Feig

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

Film is definitely a director's medium. They're responsible for the look and everything, and you're a part of that process as an actor, and you try to contribute to the story. But I think it might sound a little pretentious for me to say I think of myself as an artist. I think of myself as a creative person. — Owen Wilson

I believe that every director's films reflect their lifestyle. — Takashi Miike

As a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking. — Stanley Tucci

Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about? — Billy Connolly

My father was a film-maker. He always said he wanted to go like Humphrey Jennings, the legendary director who stepped backwards over a cliff while framing a better shot. — A.A. Gill

I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene [Django] just came to me. — Quentin Tarantino

On the film where I didn't get along with the director, I just decided to not speak to him. — Elizabeth Taylor

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes. — Robert Olen Butler

I'm more prone to anarchy than I am to control - even though I'm a film director. — Terry Gilliam

Film works when a director and a star have a connection. You know, when there's something telekinetic between them, there's a partnership, it's like alter egos. It's like James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock, or Fellini and Mastroianni. I'm not comparing, I'm just saying, if you can come into a relationship where the director and star have such a bond, it's so much easier to make a movie. — Nicolas Winding Refn

I didn't so much choose the film as director Claire Denis chose me. — Beatrice Dalle

When I do a film, usually I work from my director. That's my boss. The director is interpreting the writer's vision, and we all interpret it, and they create their own vision as well. — Juliette Lewis

A film is a director's vision ... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. — Natasha Richardson

To the documentary director the appearance of things and people is only superficial. It is the meaning behind the thing and the significance underlying the person that occupy his attention ... Documentary approach to cinema differs from that of story-film not in its disregard for craftsman-ship, but in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put. Documentary is a trade just as carpentry or pot-making. The pot-maker makes pots, and the documentarian documentaries. — Paul Rotha

There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character. — Idris Elba

First, there has been a lot of interest in The Drive-in, but, alas, it hasn't actually come to fruition. Maybe soon. Don really got Bubba and I didn't think it could be a film. I thought it was too odd to make it to film. He asked me to do the screenplay, but I declined. I didn't see that it could be a screenplay but he wrote one and proved me wrong. He was always considerate about what I thought about the film and the story's presentation, but in the end, he's the director and he had to make decisions. All good ones. — Joe R. Lansdale

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. [C]uriosity is going to be one of the primary reasons why people pay money to see this movie; boredom will be the predominant result. — James Berardinelli

I like to be able to understand the feeling of the director, that a film corresponds to something in his life. Otherwise, it doesn't interest me much. — Louis Garrel

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. — Michael Haneke

In comics, the writer is also the director in a certain way. So if this were a film, you wouldn't tell the cinematographer to make a good fight scene while you go and get a cup of coffee. — Max Bemis

It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect ... You know, I'm in. — Brad Pitt

Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it. — James Franco

I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director. — Alex Graves

From time to time, there are people in the film industry who appear on the horizon with a unique vision. South African director Neill Blomkamp is one of those rare people. — Ridley Scott

My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head. — Josh Radnor

Filmmaking is not the work of the weak-minded. It may not be rocket science, but it requires ten times more strength of the mind than that. — Abhijit Naskar

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It's a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other. — Rainer Werner Fassbinder

You don't hear a film director saying 'Money mustn't go out of the industry' to actors. You don't hear a concert promoter saying 'We must make sure that money doesn't go out of our industry' to Elton John. Some people in football seem to think, 'Never mind the players, let's get on with the game.' — Gordon Taylor

My aunt put my cousins into a children's modelling agency, then my mum did it with us. Me and my sister got a few TV adverts, which was good pocket money. A director saw photos of me and asked me to do a short film. — Sullivan Stapleton

I think the best work of the director is to listen to what all the technicians around him have to say, but then the thing is to take the best decision, what you think is the best. Then, that is the moment where you have to have all the film in your head and imagine how all of that will fit together. — Marjane Satrapi

I believe, as a producer/director, your duty is to create a beautiful horror film that really resonates. — Guillermo Del Toro

In creating music you are the writer, the director, the producer, you create it from scratch. Obviously in playing a role in a film, you take guidance and put your trust into the director. You come into it and you really trust people. — Justin Timberlake

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

I had become a film director because I thought I could express something in an artful way. — Paul Verhoeven

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. — Garth Kravits

Every film had its own grammar. And it's your job as a director to basically figure out a language to tell a story. — Darren Aronofsky

As a director, you're a bit of a dictator. But I feel that you're a better director if you're open to other people's ideas. It means that it's tougher: you have to be in a choosing process; you have to put the ego aside. As long as everybody's aiming in the same direction ... I'm open to my main partners in the film crew. — Denis Villeneuve

There are two kinds of filmmaking: Hitchcock's (the film is complete in the director's mind) and Coppola's (which thrives on process). For Hitchcock, any variation from the complete internal idea is seen as a defect. The perfection already exists. Coppola's approach is to harvest the random elements that the process throws up, things that were not in his mind when he began. — Walter Murch

I am often asked at what point in my love affair with films I began to want to be a director or a critic. Truthfully, I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to get closer and closer to films. — Francois Truffaut

In a career, when you hit 40 and you've done a lot of this and that, you want to try some new things. I feel like that as a director, too, from one film to the other. — Jean-Marc Vallee

Of course, you could, no doubt, call my going to film school the biggest mistake I ever made. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

I didn't even know what a film director was. To me, Charlie Chaplin was a goofy clown, and John Ford - what? Never heard of him. — Lloyd Kaufman

Any film that you see is never just the director. If it's a film that you love, it's not so easy to say, "Oh it's directed by this person - that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful." — Vin Diesel

Today the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of everything. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variation this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range from factory-hand of clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in whatever field and however pursued raises modern man above this level. — Johan Huizinga