Film Director Quotes

It's not that much of a difference. Basically, your job is the same as a film director. It's a triangle between creativity, money, and time. But they don't really change. You're ultimately trying to get the most creativity and time with the money that you have. ~ Darren Aronofsky

I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director. ~ David Gordon Green

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film. ~ Paul Feig

I didn't even know what a film director was. To me, Charlie Chaplin was a goofy clown, and John Ford - what? Never heard of him. ~ Lloyd Kaufman

I always felt more like a girl than a boy, I don't know. Music was very important to me, movies were not important. I was not dreaming of becoming a film director. ~ Lukas Moodysson

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes. ~ Robert Olen Butler

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head. ~ Mike Nichols

I think the two jobs I dreamed of doing as a teenager were comic book artist and record cover illustrator. Maybe film director was in the mix as well, but that seemed to be an impossible mountain to climb. ~ Dave McKean

The duty of a film director is to focus more on the soul of the spectator. ~ Ken Loach

When I was growing up in the '50s, I had never heard of a "woman film director," so I did not consider it as an option. But I was fortunate that in the late-'60s and '70s, because of the feminist movement, women were stepping into all sorts of careers that had been closed to them in the past and film was one of them. ~ Chris Hegedus

As a film director and as film actors, you get used to a certain rhythm that's slow. But with TV, it's hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. It's a different pace. ~ Lee Daniels

I had become a film director because I thought I could express something in an artful way. ~ Paul Verhoeven

It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me. ~ Mary Harron

I never feel like a smug or a smart-alec film director, and there are plenty of those around. ~ Martin McDonagh

A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people. ~ Elia Kazan

On Hayao Miyazaki
I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.
"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."
Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?
"I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb. ~ Roger Ebert

The writer must be a participant in the scene ... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

In my mid-20s, I was directing episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock' and 'Peter Gunn.' I was pretty much on course and - as I sometimes joke - was prepared to devote my life to become the second best film director in my family. ~ George Stevens, Jr.

I guess you could say I'm like a film director but my movies have only one frame. ~ Jeff Wall

My tutor was a film director on the side, and she introduced me to film. She then put me in one of her short films, and it came out of that. That's when I fell in love with the process of making a film. After that, I was about 15 and I was like, "This is what I've gotta do." So, I started taking acting lessons, and then I applied to college to do acting. I got an agent, and it all just happened. ~ Eve Hewson

The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else's decision about the final form of something. It's so hard as to be intolerable. ~ Trevor Nunn

I wasn't one of those kids who dreamed of writing novels when I was 8 or 12. I wanted to be a film director. I wanted to make big action movies. I loved movies like 'Die Hard,' 'Predator,' 'Aliens,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' ~ Matthew Reilly

I didn't have the problem of finding myself at 45 on the wrong course - I always wanted to be a film director. ~ Elia Kazan

I don't ever like to feel myself in the position to demand of an actor that they trust I'm going to do something worthwhile. I feel a responsibility to articulate what it is I'm going to do. Whether that's showing them a full script or sitting down with them and describing my ideas in detail. It's a very healthy burden on me as a film director to be able to articulate what I want to do, to inspire actors, rather than just saying, take it on trust I'll be able to do something worthwhile. ~ Christopher Nolan

If you don't get it right, what's the point? ~ Michael Cimino

I've always been passionately in love with movies, to such a degree that even as a young person of about nineteen or twenty I thought maybe I would try to become a film director. The reason I didn't do it was because I felt I didn't have the right personality. At that time in my life, I was mortally shy. ~ Jonathan Lethem

I am the best film director in the world. ~ Lars Von Trier

As a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking. ~ Stanley Tucci

In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a patient or as a doctor, we have only one commercial American filmmaker who consistently speaks with his own voice. That is Woody Allen, gag writer, musician, humorist, philosopher, playwright, stand-up comic, film star, film writer and film director. ~ Vincent Canby

No, really. Just do it. You have some kind of weird reasons that are okay. ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

I always thought it would be very funny if I was a blind film director. ~ Woody Allen

If you're bored with something, act as if you're seeing it for the first time. Look at it with new eyes. Pretend you're seeing it as a film director, theme park designer or your Aunt Josie - anything that provides a change in perspective. To beat boredom, make the familiar unfamiliar. ~ Sam Harrison

As a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. And my own passion was that I wanted to be a film director. I realized that being an astronaut was not going to be an option, so I said, "Well, I'm going to be a director and do films in space." ~ Alfonso Cuaron

In my career, I have played a gangster, an ex cop, a journalist and a film director. Yet, the label of a serial kisser refuses to leave me. ~ Emraan Hashmi

A good [film] director is talented, imaginative, and does his homework. ~ Vilmos Zsigmond

I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

I would've been intrigued by being a film director. I would've been intrigued by politics. I thought about architecture. ~ Charlie Rose

The vast majority of people support the idea of an enlightened, modern union of countries demonstrating solidarity. Film director Wim Wenders recently summed up the problem to me very well. He said the idea of Europe has become an administration, and now people think that the administration is the idea. But that doesn't mean we should give up on the idea - it means we should change the administration. ~ Martin Schulz

I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called 'Top of the Lake,' that was shot by Jane Campion, who's a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character. ~ Jay Ryan

Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director. ~ Anthony Browne

I'm pretty much a character-driven film director and my movies are smaller. I don't do a lot of coverage. I use lots of master shots. ~ Stanley Tucci

A strong film director does leave you to your devices. A strong director allows you to be free and you trust that he's there and he will tell you if you've gone too far. A strong director allows you to be much more experimental and take greater chances than a director who isn't secure within himself. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

The record producer is the music world's equivalent of a film director. ~ Phil Ramone

I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever. ~ John Waters

To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection. ~ Woody Allen

An established film director can just pick up the phone and say to a star, 'Hey, are you interested in doing a commercial?' ~ Tony Scott

It was only when I saw films in my early 20s by Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Sally Potter and Kathryn Bigelow, I started to think, 'Oh, it's possible.' I dared to suggest that I wanted to train to be a film director. ~ Sarah Gavron

You don't hear a film director saying 'Money mustn't go out of the industry' to actors. You don't hear a concert promoter saying 'We must make sure that money doesn't go out of our industry' to Elton John. Some people in football seem to think, 'Never mind the players, let's get on with the game.' ~ Gordon Taylor

That's when it really came together for me that I was in a Bond film, to have my own spy car! ~ Rick Yune

Voices of Transition educates, opens minds to new possibilities and presents a new vision of how our food system could be. As a historic transition unfolds, this film is a very powerful tool. ~ Rob Hopkins

Only the past is real. ~ Frank Lentricchia

Snoop Scorsese, that's my director name. ~ Snoop Dogg

The cool thing about 'Spy Kids 3D: Game Over' was that Robert Rodriguez brought back 3D. I feel like he did with that film. Now, every film is 3D. ~ Daryl Sabara

I had grown up working in a video store, and I'd grown up more with film than I had with theater, so I kind of felt a natural call. ~ Timothy Simons

Cinema is a language. It can say things - big, abstract things. And I love that about it. I'm not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you've got time and sequences. You've got dialogue. You've got music. You've got sound effects. You have so many tools. And you can express a feeling and a thought that can't be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it's so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. Its not just words or music-it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that's what cinema can do. ~ David Lynch

Everybody doesn't get to do each and every film. I don't compete with others; I compete with myself. I have been an athlete, a sportsperson; so I know how to be competitive in a healthy way. ~ Deepika Padukone

I think the film is beautifully realised. His legacy as a journalist was recorded - as it were - well, and certainly the important issues of the '50s - or even today - are delivered and presented to the audience in a rather honest and objective way. ~ David Strathairn

Though poor and anxious to work, I refused to alter anything. They would take me as I looked or not at all ... Eventually I profited by looking like myself and not like what was fashionable years ago with certain film technicians in Rome. ~ Sophia Loren

My filmmaking style of remixing came out of necessity. When I was a film theory student at UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, there were no film production facilities. The only way I learned to tell stories on film was by re-cutting and splicing together celluloid of old movies, early animated films, home films, sound slug - anything I could get my hands on. ~ Elisa Kreisinger

When I first met Sam Mendes, I was a bit confused and said to him, 'I'm 50 years old. What am I going to do at 50 in a Bond film?' ~ Monica Bellucci

We petitioned to get access to film [Suffragette] at the Houses of Parliament and we whooped with joy when we were allowed in, as this is the first ever commercial film to shoot there. ~ Sarah Gavron

I did a film called 'Floating' early on that had a scene which was similar to a real-life situation I was in at the time. It involved me having a conversation with my father, who was dying. It was close to home and it made me realise acting wasn't just making faces for the cameras, it was a real art form. ~ Norman Reedus

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. ~ Robert Penn Warren

I think that people are going to find more interest in the human condition, especially with them being weaned on so much reality television. They want character driven stuff along with real violence. Cage fighting is very popular with the kids right now. They see and know what one punch can do to someone's face. You can't give someone five hundred punches in a film anymore. ~ Dolph Lundgren

Most of my movies are indies. The best scripts I can find are independent films. But I love big-budget movies, I love craft services! ~ Anthony Mackie

I've seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don't do commercials, I don't do films pre-prepared by other people, I don't do star system. So I do my own little thing. ~ Agnes Varda

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story. ~ Shane Black

I've always liked making things that don't deny the medium that they're made in. If it's collage, I'm happy for it to look like that. If it's a film made with computers, I don't mind that it looks like a film made with computers as long as it still has a feeling or a mood or an atmosphere that is relevant. ~ Dave McKean

I'm going to be a great film star. That is, if booze and sex don't get me first. ~ Jay Presson Allen

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made. ~ Robert Towne

I hope I'm always lucky enough to be able to work in theater, TV, and big films and small films. I think there's advantages and disadvantages to all of them. The fact that this was a small film without much money and without much time made it rich in energy and momentum and drive when we were actually making it 'cause that's all you've got. You've just got the story and the people. ~ Harry Treadaway

Thirty-nine-year-old moderately successful Human Resources Director. Interests include regency romances, reality TV, and baking large novelty birthday cakes for other people's children. Hobbies include drinking Tia Maria and eating Turkish delight in the bath and dining out with her mum and dad. Wanted to be a ballerina but didn't end up with a ballerina body; however, has been told she is an impressive dirty dancer when drunk. Knows her wine, so please just hand the wine list over. Godmother to nine children, member of two book clubs, Social Club Manager for the Australian Payroll Officers' Association. Suffers from a severe blushing problem but is not shy and will probably end up better friends with your friends than you, which you'll find highly irritating after we break up. Has recently become so worried about meeting the love of her life and having children before she reaches menopause that she has cried piteously in the middle of the night. But otherwise is generally quite cheerful and has on at least three separate occasions that she knows of been described as 'Charming'. Yep, that about summed it up. What a catch. ~ Liane Moriarty

You have to start with the notion that you pick the actor who's going to embody the role, the best person that you can find. If you don't start with that then it sort of defies the whole purpose of trying to make the best film that you can make. ~ Christopher Meledandri

I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content, which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor. ~ Nigel Cole

We love making movies. We got into the business to make movies. At the end of the day, whether you're doing a low budget film or a big budget film, you want it to do well and you want people to see it. That's the whole point. You want to put some kind of message in it. ~ Liam Hemsworth

When I first came to Hollywood, I used to dream of doing films and escaping television. ~ Billy Campbell

The general effect of viewing 'Jumanji' is thrilling. I was able to see on film a thing that at one point had only existed in my imagination. I got to see the images from my book come alive. ~ Chris Van Allsburg

The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director - now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog - and really the process is as like herding as may be. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

I'm certainly not going to tell other people what they should do with their own personal lives. I think it's certainly easier for a director to be out. The public is not going to see a movie because the director is gay or straight. It's maybe a little harder for an actor or actress because of, you know, the love roles and stuff. But gay people have been impersonating heteros in the movies for years. So, hopefully, that is becoming less of an issue. I think it would have been really great if a gay person had played a gay person. That's brave! ~ John Waters

This, among other things, is where the magic of the screen lies: that suddenly, as an audience, you find yourself in a state of tension because you're in a world shown to you by the director. That world is so coherent, so comprehensive, so succinct that you're transported into it and experience tension because you sense the tension between the characters. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Roles written for women are so much more complex on television. The film world is becoming quite flimsy for women. ~ Julianna Margulies

My first job as assistant director was to make sure he didn't cast the talented blond dancer who had so easily stolen my boyfriend the summer before. I accomplished this with the persistent and skilled manipulation of a grade A bitch. ~ Tina Fey

I'm a lot more selective with work these days. My perfect plan is to do one movie every nine months. It would have to be a project that I found inspiring. It would also have to include other actors and a director I am inspired to work with. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

I've worked with actors before where I was like, this is not working, and then I've seen their work on the screen and I've been like, Wow, that was a really great performance. Because there are a lot of elements with film. It's not like stage. It's not a kind of performance art anymore; it's a highly tuned kind of collaboration - a symphony. ~ Vincent Kartheiser

What I will add as an perfect example of a man who is passionate of his work, without wife, everything giving, no information about his life like mother, father or something like this... I will give as an example NightClawer.
People often understand under this name some kind a horror, but unfortunately it's about a reporter and it's not horror. I will call it passion! ~ Deyth Banger

I also don't like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don't like. ~ Dario Argento

You go to New York or L.A., and every waiter wants to be a writer, director or actor. But there's a common thread: everybody wants to do it because they love it. ~ Gillian Alexy

There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word. ~ Ben Kingsley

'Alice' took over two years to make and took a great deal of planning, obviously much more than usual. We spent so much more time prepping the film, and that was unique for us. ~ Jennifer Todd

I mean no film is beyond criticism, but I think we've made a very modest movie. ~ Walter Hill

Obviously I'd love to work with any of these great directors because every time I've worked with them I've gained a tremendous amount as an actor. Each director has his own way of pushing you towards improving yourself. ~ Zhang Ziyi

When you want to make a film abroad, you need producers and people who support you. You need a team that speaks your language. ~ Bahman Ghobadi

Where have I been? she wondered. Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?

For some time things had been going badly for her. She could cite nothing in particular as a problem; rather, it was as if life in general had a grudge against her. Things persisted in turning grey. Although at first she had revelled in the erudite seclusion of her job, in the protection against the vulgarities of the world that it offered, after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding. When, very occasionally, she raised her eyes from the past and surveyed the present, it faded from her view and became as ungraspable as a mirage. Although she had discussed this with the Director, who had waved away her condition of mind as an occupational hazard, she was still not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived. ~ Marian Engel

There's no continuity in videos ... you can jump around all over the place. In features, you can't throw in a close-up of a musician stomping on a guitar - you have to film a scene. ~ Tamra Davis

Every director is themselves; [they're] not playing a part. ~ Scarlett Johansson

I believe that you must be madly in love with cinema to create films. You also need a huge cinematic baggage. ~ Jean-Pierre Melville

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues. ~ Terry Pratchett