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
In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director. — Alfred Hitchcock
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard. — Billy Wilder
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.
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
I'm not interested in a realistic look - not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.
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
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
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
Great moments are born from great opportunities.
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
All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.
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. —
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
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
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
I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50 and it's 3% good and 97% stupid.
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
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
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
To make a great film need three things - the script, the script and the script.
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
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 — Robert Bresson
Good Director Quotes
Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre. — Joan Littlewood
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
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
There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors — Francois Truffaut
A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly. — Kevin Bacon
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
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
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
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
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
Movie Producer Quotes
I am going to produce a movie of my own. I am not going to stick to the time-tested formulae of Hindi cinema. I want to make a film for the present generation. So there will be a lot of new faces in the film. — Kabir Bedi
America is the only country capable of producing national movies: its culture has become a global culture. — Jean-Jacques Annaud
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. — Kevin Bacon
I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas. — Jim Jarmusch
Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids, and his parents had a pasta factory, so as a kid, he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door. After he became a movie producer, he opened up De Laurentiis Food Stores - one in Los Angeles and one in New York. — Giada De Laurentiis
I’m not producing movies to make money — Ranbir Kapoor
When a picture can't make it on its own, the producers pull in a 'controversial' message - the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby. — Pauline Kael
People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at. — Ridley Scott
I didn't have any ambition to produce big mainstream popcorn movies. — Jodie Foster
I was a very idealistic, very romantic kid in a very typically Midwestern Methodist repressed home. There was no show of affection of any kind, and I escaped to dreams and fantasies produced, by and large, by the music and the movies of the '30s. — Hugh Hefner
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera. — Gordon Parks
Tagore once said - art has to be beautiful, but, before that, it has to be truthful. — Ritwik Ghatak
The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed. — Gordon Parks
We lay out our lives in a narrative we understand, like a movie, but are you enjoying making it or are you wondering who's watching my movie. — Donald Glover
Hollywood is still the mecca for good or bad, but it isn't the beginning or end for filmmaking. — Robert Duvall
Living
consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and
responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the
moment. — Sidney Poitier
Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. — Wong Kar-wai
Cinema’s characteristic forte is its ability to capture and communicate the intimacies of the human mind. — Satyajit Ray
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them. — Renny Harlin
Moviemaking Quotes
In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato! — Jean-Luc Godard
The art of moviemaking seems to get thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the look of everything becomes of little importance. You lose the memorable images; everything looks like it's been shot at night with a security camera. — Rob Zombie
I think American cinema, particularly, has become so disposable. It's not even cinema, It's just moviemaking. — Eriq La Salle
Just because a movie is satisfactory means that the person who makes it is satisfactory. One can make a wonderful movie but still not be a wonderful person. In terms of interviews, it's probably not a good idea, because moviemakers tend not to tell the truth, even when asked a question. — Mamoru Oshii
It's easier for me to get comedies made because of my track record. Everybody needs to find their niche. I love dramas, but I understand that I am still just a young man in moviemaking. I know there will be some time to get back to that. — Ice Cube
Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process. — Leonard Maltin
People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me? — Dale Carnegie
We saw what happens with Bolsheviks. It was another catastrophe. I don't have the solution. The moviemaker can ask questions but not give solutions. — Costa-Gavras
It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go. — Leonardo DiCaprio
In moviemaking, you learn to pay attention to detail, because so much is in the detail. And when you're shooting, you try to be very alert to what's going on, even if you're tired. — Frederick Wiseman
More 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
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
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?' — Jennifer Lawrence
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
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. — Kevin Bacon
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. — Stephanie Zacharek
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. — Wes Anderson
There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors — Francois Truffaut
In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody's got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about. — Cameron Crowe
A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should. — Frank Darabont
Life is like a B-picture script! It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down. — Kirk Douglas
Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing. — Christopher Nolan
All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds. — David Lynch
One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered. Every story is its own kind of expedition, with its own set of challenges. — Ron Howard
When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process. — Oliver Stone
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
Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again. — Jean Reno
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
I steal from every single movie ever made. I love it - if my work has anything it's that I'm taking this from this and that from that and mixing them together. If people don't like that, then tough titty, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal; they don't do homages. — Quentin Tarantino
Life isn’t happening to you; life is responding to you. Life is your call! Every area of your life is your call. You are the creator of your life. You are the writer of your life story. You are the director of your life movie. You decide what your life will be – by what you give out. — Rhonda Byrne
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
I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen. — Julie Delpy
The best directors I've worked with, they all have the same thing in common. They're the first to say, 'I don't know.' If you ask them, 'How are we actually pulling off this movie?', they'll just shrug and go, 'I have absolutely no idea.' — Ryan Reynolds
I guess you could say I'm like a film director but my movies have only one frame. — Jeff Wall
A writer/director is a tough thing to gauge when someone hasn't directed a movie before. You just don't know. Sometimes it will be a great script that's written beautifully, and then the director who has also written it does not have the facility to translate it. — Richard Ayoade
The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. — Jean-Luc Godard
Entertainment must be a satisfying emotional experience, a stirring of the heart. We need all kinds of young men and women. Those people with an artist's eye and an executive's brain that we term directors. Those wrestlers with their souls and typewriters known as authors. The beggars on horseback called actors and actresses. — Hedda Hopper
If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it. — Michael Caine
There is no reason why challenging themes and engaging stories have to be mutually exclusive - in fact, each can fuel the other. — Edward Zwick
Movies always fascinated me. They are an endless source of inspiration. There are countless images by great directors that made a profound impression on me, and I see film as a sublime example of teamwork. — Giorgio Armani
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. — Stanley Kubrick
When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director. — Rebecca De Mornay
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice. — Jordan Peele
I don't think the written word is important in movies anymore and the really great movies are done by great directors who in many cases write their own scripts. I think it's gotten to be more of a visual thing than an audible thing. — Anita Loos
I'm like a movie director, so wherever I feel that I need to go over this type of beat, that's what I'm going to do, that's where I'm going to go. — Ghostface Killah
I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. — Kathryn Bigelow
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