Director Quotes Page 2

My contributions were many: First clown director, with witty sayings and flashily dressed, now called master of ceremonies.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre.

At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the checks.

An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast.

Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time.

Only eyes washed by tears can see clearly.

I should mention that I am a member of the board of directors of Dimensional Fund Advisors.

The very nature of cool is that you think about it too much and it becomes uncool.

The best camera, is the one that you have with you!

I don’t create art to get high dollar projects, I do high dollar projects so I can create more art.

Cinema is a director's medium, so you're saying, "What do you want?" Being an actor is about adapting - physically and emotionally. If that means you have to look great for it and they can make you look great, then thank you. And if you have to have everything washed away, then I'm willing to do that too.

Film is a dramatised reality and it is the director's job to make it appear real... an audience should not be conscious of technique.

Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies - they're the only ones who can make a true buck.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying.

I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director.

And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!

It was always my dream to be a director.

A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone's disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.

The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money.

How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, 'How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?'

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.

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries.

At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.

I have zero tolerance for people who don't come completely prepared.

I expect contribution, I expect attendance, and I expect directors to take trips and visit the company's programs.

My background was art school, documentary director and surfer with a keen interest in thrilling acts of life threatening stupidity.

The profession of film director can and should be such a high and precious one;

that no man aspiring to it can disregard any knowledge that will make him a better film director or human being.

Sam Wood, the director, made most of his money as a real estate agent;

there was nothing of the temperamental artist about him.

Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.

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.

I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets.

There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.

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.