Drama is life with the dull bits left out. There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. I believe in putting the horror in the minds of the audience, and not necessarily on the screen. The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
— Alfred Hitchcock
Charming Directing Film quotations
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't.
My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
That was certainly true the first time, when I did Body Heat, the first movie that I directed. I was looking for a vessel to tell a certain kind of story, and I was a huge fan of Film Noir, and what I liked about it was that it was so extreme in style.
Directing ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is, you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get five shots and you're only going to get two.
Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films.
They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home.
I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.
During the last decades, films about the black experience have been produced, directed, and even scripted by white men. Some of them are excellent. But most reflect George Bernard Shaw’s warning that 'if you do not tell your stories others will tell them for you and they will vulgarize and degrade you.'
I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films.
Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism.
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you've seen them.
Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create
Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.
I think its a very strange question that I have to defend myself.
I don’t feel that. You are all my guests, it’s not the other way around, that’s how I feel.
The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.
What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.
I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat.
I attend film school, my background is acting and directing.
But the acting does best, I like to work on the stage.
First I did animation films, when I was young, in time-lapse.
And then in the '80s I went directly to video. The main reason for that was that I could control all the steps.
Human beings share the same common problems.
A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.
I've never been to Comic-Con, but I'm certainly aware from this side of the Atlantic that it's a very important part of film marketing now, even when the films are not directly linked to a comic.
Almost all the movies I've directed are adaptations.
And I think what I found when I went to film school, where they try to push you to find your voice or your thing, is that I got a lot of things out of adaptations.
Brad Bird is fond of saying that music is the easiest thing that can derail a film because if it slightly goes a degree off track it will take the viewer in the wrong emotional direction. To work with people who actually care about that is a good thing.
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct.
And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.
Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
The formula for a successful film is simple: good script, good direction, a dedicated cast and a fantastic crew. If you have all of these elements then the rest will fall into place.
People have forgotten how to tell a story.
I do love directing. I'm only comfortable working in the independent film arena for a very small budget where I have creative control and I can put my stamp on it.
In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.
[The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck.