Top 1200 Movie Director Quotes & Sayings

I remember in the Carpenter version, you got acquainted with the characters and really knew them. It was a real character piece. Each actor was serviced in the movie, and we tried to do that in this movie as well. I like the fact that there was a European, first-time director. I'd known of him because I'm from Europe. I knew him as a commercial director and thought one of his commercials was great. I thought it was an interesting take on such a big-budget cult classic.

In the life of a director - these days in particular - when it really does take so long to do a movie, with a few exceptions, actors may never work with a director again, even if they're great friends.

Truth be told, actually, my favorite director of the Movie Brats was not Scorsese. Loved him. But my favorite director of the Movie Brats was Brian de Palma. I actually met De Palma right after I'd done 'Reservoir Dogs,' and I was very beside myself.

I think you've got to talk to the director, see the director's films and recognise that it's important that the work fits right in and see if as part of the movie.

I kind of joke with myself that you shouldn't be able to be a creative producer if you weren't a first AD. Because it is such fantastic training for really understanding what everyone does, and how the movie actually gets made. You have to know if you're the first you're kind of the set general, you're at the director's right hand, you know everything about how a director puts a movie together, you know everything about how a movie gets made.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

I want to get into the theater. I really wanted to be a theater director, but I turned out to be a movie director.

With a director it's all about the work; I'd work with a great director over - you know, I'm not the kind of actor who that doesn't go, 'I want to play this role.' It's more like, 'I want to work with this director,' regardless of what the role is because if it's a good director, you'll probably find a good role because it's a decent film. But a mediocre director will always make a mediocre movie.

I was fired from a movie because I did 'Heathers!' I was cast in a movie, and the director saw an advance screening and was offended by it and fired me.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

I don't think there is a movie that I've been on that I wasn't sure I could direct it better. But certainly also, as a director of photography, I have to serve the movie in whatever way I can as a filmmaker.

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.

Giancarlo Giammetti has a lot of nervous energy. He's a director, really. He was trying to direct the Valentino movie over my shoulder. I don't blame him - that's been his job for 50 years. But I had final cut in the movie by contract and I wouldn't have made the movie if I had not been completely independent.

I was focused on The Hunger Games movie with my director, with the studio, and with the cast and crew. We all just focused on making the best possible movie we could, and earning the right to do more.

You shoot yourself in the foot when you think, 'We have to get a good scary movie director to do a script by another scary movie writer.'

A lot of times I don't know if I trust the director to tell that film's story. Or I think it's inappropriate for a male director to tell a female story, or a white director to tell a black story. Everyone walks away from a movie differently, because you're relating it to your own life.

I thought I was depressed because I wasn't a writer/director. I moved into a space where I'm a writer/director, my movie is a hit at Sundance, I have a wonderful, loving boyfriend, and wow, I have financial stability. Why can't I get out of bed still?

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.

I've always laughed at the term "female director" or even "black director." A director's a director.

I think when you pay attention to the shots, you're aware of the fact that there's a director. Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.

The director makes the movie. The director has to have the story in their head, has to know the style of the piece, has to answer questions from actors, design, set, lighting, every department throughout the pre-production, production, and post-production, because they've got it in their mind. They've got to know exactly what they want and what the style and story of the movie is. It's them. They make it.

I do not proactively approach Hollywood, but also I do not always turn down offers. But since I'm living as a movie director, I have a desire to shoot something like 'This is a Hollywood movie!' at least once in my lifetime.

The director is the most important because, ultimately, as an actor, when you watch a movie, it looks like an actor is giving a performance, and they kind of are. But, what's actually happening is that an actor has given a bunch of ingredients over to a director, who then constructs a performance. That's movie-making.

I think I'm an extremely conscientious producer and now equally as a director and it gives me the opportunity to look at the entire movie and really allow the movie to be the creative vision of the actors, the writer and myself, because I'm in charge of it from a producer and a director point of view.

There was a choice of being a director who's more familiar with the technicality of doing a movie, like learning about the camera and filters and setup, or being a director who can actually talk to actors. And I always wanted to be an actor's director.

I will never become a director or a movie producer. I was always looking at picture directing because I didn't know what to do! You can't be a movie director without real preparation.

If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

Sometimes when I make a movie, my main goal is to show the movie to one particular director.

I never take credit for my movie's success. I am the face of the movie, but there are numerous unsung heroes behind the scene. From the director, cameraman and editor to the light boy, everyone knows how difficult it is to satisfy the audience.

I'd rather have one good scene in a movie by a great director than a small role in a mediocre movie.

I definitely managed to do different kinds of things. My focus is usually who the director is, because at the end of the day the director is the storyteller, what the movie is all about. I don't want to participate in something that I don't think is constructive storytelling.

When you shoot an independent movie you have a very limited amount of time, and you don't want to be that actor, when a poor director is trying to get through a movie, that you're asking at every second to discuss performance.

After directing movies, I respect any director in this world, because making a movie as a director is tons and tons of work.

What's interesting as a director, and even studio executives don't understand this, is that if you're directing a $200 million movie with six million people, it's the same as directing a $25,000 movie with three people. The director's job is, "You stand there and do that," or "This is the shot I want." The logistics change, but the job remains the same. And I enjoy the job.

I think people really don't understand what a producer does versus what a director does. I mean, the producer is often the person that is on the movie the longest - it's their material that they are then bringing the director onto to bring it to the screen. Are we overlooked? Absolutely.

I think one third of my work is with first-time directors because I think I should, you know? Really, the difference between a first-time director and a second- or third-time director - I mean there's no director who makes enough movies anyway - but if they're talented, they have it. And there is no movie that is perfect.

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 this movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes.

You have a soft spot in your heart for each movie, and you're doing certain things. You're learning as you're going, as a director, and each movie is its own entity.

In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director - especially if he wrote part of the script himself - is clearly more the author of the movie.

If you have a script that's not great, if you have a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who's not good, never are you going to have a good movie.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

I don't think it's so important to be a movie director. It's a beautiful profession, but no more than to be a cartoon writer. A very rich cartoon writer. I've done a lot of films, and I know deeply that, in all of cinema, there is no director who is as good as Shakespeare.

I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.

I think I understand the line between my job and the director's. I have no interest in directing. Not my movie, not your movie, nobody's movie.

You have to accept that the moment you hand a script to a director, even if you've written it as an original script, it becomes his or her movie. That's the way it has to be because the pressures on a director are so staggering and overwhelming that if he or she doesn't have that sort of level of decision making ability, that sort of free reign, the movie simply won't get done. It won't have a vision behind it. It may not be your vision as a screenwriter, but at least it will have a vision.

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.

I hope that in another way we can move the need to say, instead of being a Black director, or a woman director, or a French director that I'm just a director.

If you look at the least effective of the 'Twilight' movies, it was when they brought in an action-movie director instead of a director who was really a good storyteller. And you can tell the difference.

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.

Sometimes you can't even find the director on a movie set. Sometimes you don't want to find the director on a movie set.

The size of budgets does not alter my decision if I should do it. If there's a movie with a budget of only $1 million that I find interesting, then I'll sign up, but it has to be in the hands of a director who can do something with it. Ultimately, it's a director's medium.

I don't believe in director's cuts and I also don't really believe in deleted scenes because the movie that is in theaters, that's what the director made.

I'd really like to do a movie, either as a producer or director. My ultimate fantasy would be to direct a movie and produce the entire soundtrack. I don't really see myself acting.

I'm just saying to everyone. The director does not direct the trailer. It's an edited version that takes so many moments of the movie, sometimes it's not even in the movie. The director does the movie. So don't judge the director based on the trailer. Please.

Producers don't like the director who ignores their opinion - but I always try not to be the nicest person when making a movie. It's easy to do that. Just say 'Yes sir', "Alright', 'Okay' - but they're not seeing the movie because if they can, they should be directing the movie.

The movie I worked on that had the most problems and interference came from the smallest indie movie I've ever done. I couldn't believe what the director had to go through; he was destroyed.

When I'm writing a movie, it's usually pretty close to what the movie is going to be, which is just a luxury of being a writer-director.

That's the best way to work on a project: talk to the director. In the end, it's the director's idea of how they perceive the movie and how they perceive the characters.