The best director is the one you don't see. — Billy Wilder
A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard. — Billy Wilder
A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should. — Frank Darabont
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. — Sergei Eisenstein
There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors — Francois Truffaut
I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move! — Howard Hawks
The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How. — Peter Brook
The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator. — Ken Loach
For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident. — Sidney Lumet
When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process. — Oliver Stone
Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed. — Elia Kazan
When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm super-opinionated about what I do and don't like. — Sofia Coppola
A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have. — Natasha Richardson
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. — Alfred Hitchcock
Short Good Director Quotes
It was great. I mean, it's a blast directing underwater stuff. — David R. Ellis
Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles. — Alejandro Jodorowsky
Casting is 65 percent of directing. — John Frankenheimer
The success of the film is down to the crew. — Dougray Scott
Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up. — Alfred Hitchcock
Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre. — Joan Littlewood
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. — John Waters
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room. — James Denton
Audiences are harder to please if you're just giving them effects, but they're easy to please if it's a good story. — Steven Spielberg
As the cinematographer is usually more visual than the director is and full cooperation is really the answer and to make a great film, you need a good director and you need a good cinematographer. — Vilmos Zsigmond
I will work with a director who has good material because at the end of the day, that's what counts. — Javier Bardem
I guarantee you that two directors that are any good can take the same story, change the name of the characters, change the name of the town, and make an entirely different picture. — Howard Hawks
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director. — Bette Davis
There are definitely reasons to do certain things, but I like to stick to good director, good actor, good script. — Amanda Seyfried
A musical is only as good as its director. The same can also be said for the CIA. — Martin Short
Good Director Image Quotes
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Directors Day Quotes
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. — Matt Damon
Oh, what the hell did I know? I went to the set the first day in full makeup and the director told me to take it off. So I did the film without makeup. I had nothing to do with anything I did. I never understood why I was so famous. — Ava Gardner
One day, we were doing a serious scene and fast talking like we do and we could not stop laughing and the director had to stop the production. We had to go to our trailer and calm down and do it all again. — Victor Garber
Persist to overcome. He that can't endure the bad, will not live to see the good.
Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more. — Wim Wenders
Filmmaking is a creative process so there is a lot of collaboration that happens on set between an actor and director, but at the end of the day, we're there to actualize the director's vision and things happen organically. — Aamir Khan
It was difficult every ten days having a new director. I'm a real collaborator and, as an actor, I want to be directed. It's hard for me to shift gears. — Jeanne Tripplehorn
Just do what works for you, because there will always be someone who thinks differently.
Honestly, I love television. I love the idea of going to work every day and getting to know your crew and having a rapport with your directors and having a family of cast. — Britt Robertson
I suppose they call me a womans director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few. — George Cukor
I've worked with more than 50 directors and I've paid attention since day one. That's pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I've seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving. — Tommy Lee Jones
How can you have a director that doesn't go to work with the crew every day and talk to them? — Don Bluth
Movie Director Quotes
Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple — Gene Wilder
The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. — Jean-Luc Godard
When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite. — Sergio Leone
Never regret a day in your life: good days give happiness, bad days give experience, worst days give lessons, and best days give memories.
And Later I Thought, I Can't Think How Anyone Can Become a Director Without Learning the Craft of Cinematography. — Gus Van Sant
No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. — Ingmar Bergman
I'm a frustrated actor. My ... goal is to beat Alfred Hitchcock in the number of cameos. I'm going to try to break his record. — Stan Lee
There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. — Frank Capra
Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the 'psychological guidance' of the spectator. — Vsevolod Pudovkin
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. — Andrei Tarkovsky
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. — Steven Spielberg
Film Director Quotes
A director standing by his film rejected by the audience is like him telling a girl 'I love myself and I don't care if you don't love me'. — Ram Gopal Varma
To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script. — Alfred Hitchcock
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. — David Lean
Whatever is good for you soul, do that.
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. — Tom Hooper
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. — Satyajit Ray
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. — Francois Truffaut
Try no to resist the changes that come in your way. Instead, let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come? How Rumi Can Change Your Life?
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 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. — John Ford
When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. — Jacques Rivette
I think film and television are really a director's medium, whereas theatre is the actor's medium. — Christopher Eccleston
Film Directing Quotes
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
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. — Guy Ritchie
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. — Satyajit Ray
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
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. — Ingmar Bergman
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. — Lawrence Kasdan
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. — David Fincher
There is a battle of two wolves inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, lies, inferiority and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy and truth. The wolf that wins? The one you feed.
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. — Charlie Hunnam
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room. — Orson Welles
I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you've seen them. — Christopher Nolan
Directing Movies Quotes
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. — Graham Chapman
When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits. — Dan Fogler
Of course, I'd like to produce and direct a blockbuster, but you gotta build up to that. So now I'm learning from a bunch of little movies. And it's more fun with smaller pictures. It's more creative. — Lea Thompson
You have to fight through the bad days in order to earn the best days.
The truth is that you’re living the movie of your life. So you don’t have to direct it beforehand, you’ve gotta direct it in the moment. —
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. — Lars von Trier
One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the 'fantasy woman' is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don't think that men see things wrong and women right, just that we do see things differently. — Jane Campion
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
I work constantly but I work at a lot of different things. You know, I run a theater company in New York, I direct plays, act in plays, in movies, so I try to keep it eclectic. — Philip Seymour Hoffman
Directing is like guitar playing. That's a unique mind-set and talent, unto itself. I like the idea of putting everything together to make a great movie. — Slash
It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct. — John Frankenheimer
It's not movies and it's not "fine art." The beauty of a comic is that it's clear, direct communication. My work is getting simpler and more cartoony because I'm much more interested in communication now than in any illustrative value. — Frank Miller
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. — Helmut Newton
My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. ... (when asked who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening') Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. ... Good authors, too, who once knew better words now use only four-letter words writing prose. ... Brush up your Shakespeare and they'll all kowtow. — Cole Porter
There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste. — Ridley Scott
If the audience gets everything, if they see the photography and notice that it is good, then the story goes out the window, but if you become involved with the lives of the actors and forget that you are seeing mechanical devices on a huge screen - forget the make-believe - this is the job of the director to involve the audience with the actors. — Frank Capra
Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you? — Orson Welles
I got a nomination for director, which means the world to me; it's just the most exciting thing for me and my family. You do the good hard work, and the rest of it is something you shouldn't get too caught up in, but when it happens - boy! I respect it. — David O. Russell
Any good director creates a playground. That's what they do. They hire the right actor, open the door and let them play because stuff will happen, right then and there. The audience wants to believe that what's going on is happening for the first time, ever. That's what acting is. That's what good scene writing is. — Martin Landau
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
So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor. — Christian Bale
Technological civilization... rests fundamentally on power-driven machinery which transcends the physical limits of its human directors, multiplying indefinitely the capacity for the production of goods. Science in all its branches - physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology - is the servant and upholder of this system — Charles A. Beard
I think a good director casts a film so that the actors bring a lot to the table. — Debbie Allen
It's turned into a world of amateurs. There are amateur actors making millions of dollars, amateur cinematographers, amateur directors... Jesus, these amateur directors can get deals for anything. Another comic book? Oh, very good. — James Coburn
I feel that the critic and music director should have such a good relationship they can pick up the phone and call each other any time. — Zubin Mehta
There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it. — Aaron Taylor-Johnson
I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do - monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent. — Randy Harrison
Being a good director is knowing sometimes when not to say something. — Gary Oldman
I like to be cast well and then I like to be left alone. And good directors, that's generally what they do when they hire you because you have something that's useful to the part, and then they leave you alone. The times that I've run into trouble is when, very rare actually, but you get hired and then there's some sort of makeover involved. — Christopher Walken
If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. — Olivia Colman
Give me a good script, and I'll be a hundred times better as a director. — George Cukor
I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible joke on him when, as he was safely installed, the assistant director called lunch and left him up there. He could have had the lot of us fired but he was very good about it. You have to have a sense of humor in this industry. — Jean Simmons
Obviously, if a director doesn't communicative a clear, relevant vision of the material, it will not succeed no matter how good the material. — Tom Skerritt
A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do. — Elia Kazan
I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great! — Paul Rust
When I see a short schedule, my question to the director is, are you really comfortable with this, or are you doing it to be a good boy? At the end, you only win the medal if the film is good, you don't win a medal if the movie is on time. — Guillermo del Toro
I'm trying to avoid any more asshole roles, at least for a little bit. The main criteria for me when choosing a project is a good director. I just want to work with these guys that I admire because I do want to direct my own films one day, and I want to pick their brains to see what their process is like, and see what I can take from that. — Dave Franco
Most films and directors lose their nerve and want to indicate [emotions] a bit more, to show that their story is clear. I'm not saying that's a good thing; as an actor its anathema to good acting, but to have someone with the confidence to say that should I be utterly natural and minimalist is great. — Matt Damon
I've worked with some very good directors and some very bad ones. I learned a great deal from both. From the bad, untalented people, you learn what not to do. And when you work with very highly talented people, you want to emulate them. — Tommy Lee Jones
I feel like a good director provokes you to ask questions about your character, but doesn't answer them for you. — Crystal Reed
I majored in Chinese Studies. I'm probably the only director of chicken Indian zombie movies who can speak pretty good Mandarin. — Lloyd Kaufman
My musical director, Mark Cherry, is the most wonderful person who ever lived on God's good green Earth. He's my director, he does the arrangements. Really, he does everything - including certain janitorial chores! — Brett Somers
Good, bad mediocre or whatever it is, if a director wants me in his movie, I take it as a compliment. — Scott Caan
It's fun to do something funny and have the director laughing. It makes you feel good. — Jon Lovitz
Yes, there are directors I admire, the mavericks. Altman. There are many good directors. — Mark Rydell
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