Quotes About Movie Directors

#1. I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.

Patricia Highsmith

#2. I'm on a crusade to get movie directors to get their science right because, more often than they believe, the science is more extraordinary than anything they can invent.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#3. Movie directors who have filmed F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' believe it's a big book looming inside a small one, and they aren't altogether wrong.

Steve Erickson

#4. Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied ... That's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.

Akira Kurosawa

#5. For some reason, it seems like pop writers, it's like they just get worse or something over time. And then you're really jealous of movie directors whose careers seem to grow and they'll be 70 years old and still doing these incredible jobs. I'm going to reverse that, I hope.

James Mercer

#6. I love movie directors. I don't care who it is.

Brett Ratner

#7. I think a lot of people have a vision of L.A. in which TV executives and movie directors plan their latest productions by the swimming pool.

Bruno Tonioli

#8. TV showrunners have become known entities to people who watch television in the way that movie directors have been known to filmgoers for a long time. When I started out as a writer and producer in television, I never had the slightest expectation that fame would be part of the job.

Carlton Cuse

#9. People in trailers were canned and labeled much like the apple juice down at the plant, stamped with ingredients for all the world to see: chicken fried steak, overcooked vegetables, no working knowledge of any major Italian movie directors
the list went on and on.

David Sedaris

#10. I deal with guys in their 20s and early 30s who are presidents of companies, who are movie directors.

Peter Criss

#11. Usually you talk about directors in terms of the way they choose camera lenses or a kind of light to create a certain effect. But to me the most valuable commodity for a movie to create is a feeling of life, and that's what A Hard Day's Night has in spades.

Michael Patrick Jann

#12. 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

#13. The hardest thing, as a director, is that it's never right. Nothing you do is ever right. It's never exactly how you envision it. Making a movie is about making it better.

David Ayer

#14. I went to do Eclipse right after The Runaways, and I think the director of that movie might have said to another cast member that he had to beat the Joan Jett out of me.

Kristen Stewart

#15. I kind of end up getting caught up in whatever the rhythm of the movie is and how open the director is to changing things in the moment or finding it in rehearsal.

Michael Cera

#16. As a professional, it pains me to watch a movie that is botched and amateurish. I prefer directors who have control of both their craft and their ideas.

George Cukor

#17. I'm one of the lucky directors that pretty much every movie I've done has started a franchise. But I never think this way. I think that's the way you break it, if you go, 'then at the end, at the end we'll see you later.' I was forced to do it in 'Clash of the Titans.'

Louis Leterrier

#18. There are many, many different kinds of movies and directors and styles. I don't mind that a movie looks like a movie.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#19. Cast PURPOSE as the lead in your movie and you will help God, your Director, produce a masterwork.

DeVon Franklin

#20. I'm not as eager to go just work to work. I have another life outside of it, and if I'm pretty sure the movie's not going to have a life, or if it's not a director I believe in, then I probably will say no.

Scott Speedman

#21. A movie has its own fate, which often doesn't depend on the performances of the director and actors.

Zhang Ziyi

#22. Oftentimes when I'm deciding to do a movie, the main thing is really, that I look at, is the director. I've come to feel that more and more. The more movies I've done and the older I've - the more experience I have, I always knew it was a director's medium, and I always said that.

Matt Damon

#23. First time films are hard. Even with some of the greatest directors, you look back at their first film, and you are just going, 'That movie is kind of bad.'

Mike Birbiglia

#24. 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

#25. Do you know what directors go through? It's just hell. Like, why do I work so hard - to think I'm only going to see this movie five times and then never see it again 'cause I'm so sick of it? What is it worth, honestly?

Michael Bay

#26. All these directors who do different locations forget that one room can be shot from a million different angles and a million different ways. When I direct a movie, I'm going to use that.

Michael Pitt

#27. I never aspired to be a television producer and a movie director, and I'm shocked that this idea is still going on.

Jeff Tremaine

#28. You can't fake comedy - it's not like a movie, where a director can just cast a pretty face.

Chris Rock

#29. If everyone's comfortable, you can pretty much make any kind of movie that the director wants.

Jeff Fahey

#30. Coming from the industry and maintaining contacts with producers and directors, I am very well aware that costs associated with movie production are a major factor in determining where films get made.

James Costos

#31. OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can't get made without someone like me in them.

Jack Nicholson

#32. Directing is the last frontier for women in the movie business. We are studio heads, we are producers and we are writers, but we are not directors in any numbers.

Lynda Obst

#33. OSS 117 and maybe Un Balcon Sur La Mer directed by Nicole Garcia. It's a typical French movie with typical French themes with French actors, a French director ...

Jean Dujardin

#34. I worked on three independent movies in close succession and ... I really learned from those directors how to stay on budget, make your days, get it done, keep everyone happy, which is a huge thing in a movie, and to steer the ship.

Michael Urie

#35. To me, one of the main things that a director does is create the tone of his movie.

Peter Sarsgaard

#36. Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments.

Jason Reitman

#37. You don't get to see your family much. In the movie business, directors often go out of town for long periods of time, and even if you're in town, you're working 14-15 hour days. People tend to not balance out the important things in their lives with their career.

Jon Favreau

#38. I have the highest respect for stars and auteur directors. But I don't want to work with people who only invite me to the preview. We want to be in the collaborative movie business, not the financing one.

Sidney Sheinberg

#39. 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.

Stanley Tucci

#40. Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.

Lana Wachowski

#41. I have never played a superhero in real life and I would imagine it is very different Voiceover is super easy. You just come in and do a bunch of versions of it and then the animators and directors on that side of the movie put your performance together.

Jeremy Sisto

#42. I can say pretty confidently that I am not the right guy to do a superhero movie, just because I was not a comic book kid. I don't know that mythology, and I don't have it ingrained in me in the way that a lot of these other directors do.

Colin Trevorrow

#43. At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us.

Pauline Kael

#44. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave [Mamet]. His sets, everyone who's ever been involved with one of them will tell you of the funnest, funniest sets you can be on.

Clark Gregg

#45. I'm just happy when directors make a movie that is really sentimental but without being maudlin or saccharine or too much like Chewels gum. I don't want to be involved in a movie that's too much like a piece of Chewels.

Paul Schneider

#46. I feel totally lucky and happy. I think a lot of young directors feel this way but you sort of, like, have a biological clock that starts ticking and you like feel like you aren't anything until you direct a movie and you need to find yourself and this is how you do it.

Max Winkler

#47. Directors only have instinct to work out of, because there is no formula. Formulas don't work. Actually, if you follow a formula, you will probably end up with a bad movie.

Patricia Riggen

#48. 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

#49. 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.

Neill Blomkamp

#50. I had a 90-minute one-man show. I performed it and my life just exploded. Everything - my life just changed. Every writer, director, producer, studio head, movie star - they all wanted it. It was the hottest property since Rocky.

Chazz Palminteri

#51. Directors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.

Jason Blum

#52. The only entry level position on a movie is director.

Colin Hanks

#53. Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.

Arthur C. Clarke

#54. As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.

Matt Damon

#55. I personally find that each instalment has a different director, cast and crew, and I've also been in a different season in my life for each of them, so I feel like each movie is a unique experience that centres around my undying passion for music and dance.

Alyson Stoner

#56. You want the film to be critically successful - you certainly want the film to be financially successful so that you can ... well, because that's how movies like this are made, you know, they need to make money. But as a director, you can only make the movie that you want to make.

Joseph Kosinski

#57. Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

Mark Ruffalo

#58. I look at the script first and who's directing it and then talk to the director to find out what his vision of the movie is and if it matches my vision and then we go after it.

Frank Grillo

#59. On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.

Richard Gere

#60. If you are a writer/director, the [movie] characters are a part of yourself.

Juan Diego Solanas

#61. 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.

Ryuhei Kitamura

#62. When you do a first movie, you're contractually supposed to do the second one and then you don't do it, you become an executive producer. That's why there are a ton of directors who have executive producer credits on other movies.

Louis Leterrier

#63. The movie Ed Wood, about the worst director of all time, was made to prepare us for Stargate.

Roger Ebert

#64. Whenever I really want a part, I'm not sure what to do. How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie?

Jennifer Lawrence

#65. I've never played a Dane in a movie. I've had offers to be in Danish movies, including for some good directors, but I either had a job at the time or, when I was available, the movie just didn't happen. Hopefully someday I'll do one.

Viggo Mortensen

#66. With every movie I produce, I learn something. I watch the directors. It's like the relationship you have with your children. I'm there to learn from my daughters. They are the perfect spirits.

Guillermo Del Toro

#67. All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie.

Todd Solondz

#68. It's not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I'm not suited for, a lot of things I'm not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn't be interested in me for.

John Hawkes

#69. You can have a great script, or a great director and a bad script, and get a great movie. Nothing really guarantees anything.

Douglas Booth

#70. I've done so many movies with first-time directors, and honestly I just go with gut instinct. People that usually can tell me a good story, and talk to me about why the movie is the movie they want to make. I just go with my gut.

Neal H. Moritz

#71. I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

Spike Jonze

#72. Personally, I can't stand violence. In any standard American mainstream movie, there's 20 times more violence than in any one of my films, so I don't know why those directors aren't asked why they're such specialists for violence.

Michael Haneke

#73. When a filmmaker does not make films, it is as if he is jailed. Even when he is freed from the small jail, he finds himself wandering in a larger jail. The main question is: why should it be a crime to make a movie? A finished film, well, it can get banned but not the director.

Jafar Panahi

#74. The turning point in my career was Jaws. It was a turning point because I was a director-for-hire before Jaws and because it was such a big hit I could do any movie I wanted and Hollywood just wrote me a cheque.

Steven Spielberg

#75. I always say to people when I'm trying to get something going, bringing on other producers or other directors, "You can think of 95 reasons why not to make a movie. You've got to address why you want to make the movie and get it done. Just do it." I tend to live by that rule.

Ridley Scott

#76. Because I've made a film with such an amazing director as Tarantino, I'm much more conscious of working with good directors from now on, so that's what's important to me. I don't really care about making a big movie - I just want to make good ones.

Melanie Laurent

#77. The advice you give to young directors for sure is to go out and become some version of a successful movie actor. Do that first and say yes to people like Terrence Malick and Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen when they come and offer you movies. It's a great front row seat to filmmaking.

Sean Penn

#78. This is the fourth movie that I've done with this set of director-writers and I've learned to trust them at this point, because actually I started on Lego before they did.

Mark Mothersbaugh

#79. I love doing big movies. It's awesome! You have all these toys. The thing I like about this movie is, like they always say, directors have the biggest train sets! Don't tell anyone, but I'd do this for free.

Michael Bay

#80. If you're not grown up enough to understand that a trailer is not done by the director, then fine. Judge the movie from the trailer.

Michel Gondry

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

Gaspar Noe

#82. The best complement I ever got from the public or producers or directors is that I just totally blend in and become the character and they don't notice me and that the play happens or the movie happens or the TV show happens.

J.K. Simmons

#83. 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.

Michel Gondry

#84. A lot of directors don't want the pressure of a movie the size of Pearl Harbor. But I love it. I thrive on it.

Michael Bay

#85. There are certain directors where you know you're going to be good or you're not going to be there. There are people where you kind of know that if you miss the mark then it'll probably not be in the movie and that's very reassuring.

Christopher Walken

#86. I thought that Hollywood was just for geniuses and that directors come from three generations of directors. I was worried that I was not up to the challenge of making a movie. Then realized that all a director has to do is know what he wants to do.

Fede Alvarez

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

Frank Oz

#88. I think it's very important to recognize talent in all facets of filmmaking. Making a movie is such a lengthy and intense experience, so it's wonderful to honour actors, directors, producers and all crew members who put so much hard work and passion into a project.

Eva Green

#89. You always like to be the collaborator. I don't want to take over the movie, because if I want to do that, I should really become a director because then you have the control of everything, basically. I'm very happy to just be the visual part of it, doing the visual part of the movie.

Vilmos Zsigmond

#90. If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

Hans Zimmer

#91. Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

Michel Hazanavicius

#92. Morris Weissman [on the phone, discussing casting for his movie]: What about Claudette Colbert? She's British, isn't she? She sounds British. Is she, like, affected or is she British?

Julian Fellowes

#93. 'Jurassic Park' is like 'Star Wars.' Different directors can give a different taste to each movie.

Colin Trevorrow

#94. 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.

Nina Jacobson