Film Directors Quotes

I am sure I am one of 2,000 film directors in the world that Tarantino admires. ~ Park Chan-wook

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is. ~ Alan Parker

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

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

I don't like the idea of "understanding" a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it. ~ Federico Fellini

A huge cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still lifes. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. Nevertheless, as the Baudelaire orphans stumbled around the cell, dropped each half of the battering ram and listening to the sound of crows flying in circles outside, they stared at the huge cloud of dust as if it were a thing of great beauty. ~ Lemony Snicket

One thing I know is that I don't want to be a director for hire, making genre films. ~ Paul Mazursky

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

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 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

I never want to make a film. I don't wake up in the morning going, 'Ooh, I'd really love to be on set making a film today'. I'm aware that other contemporary film directors perceive film-making as what they do, as what they have to do. But I would hope that I am more catholic in my tastes. ~ Stephen Daldry

We've done a lot of films now about the IRA, we can move on from all that. I loved '71 because I think it showed a very honest trail and what it was actually like. It wasn't one-sided. I really respect ['71 director] Yann [Demange] for what he did. But we have done a lot of those things. ~ Saoirse Ronan

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad. ~ Marianne Jean-Baptiste

All FILM directors are good actors, because you have to understand actors in order to program them. ~ Henry Johnson Jr

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has. ~ Francois Truffaut

It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman

I see myself much more as a writer/director or at least an aspiring writer/director - not necessarily in film. ~ Ricky Gervais

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand. ~ Gary Oldman

There are two kinds of directors: There's the kind where two plus two equals four, and you have to help them figure it out. And then there's the kind that throws you in a room, locks the door, sets the house on fire and films it. ~ Michael Pitt

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

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

A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don't have proven directors attached to them. ~ David Duchovny

I think that too often we, film directors, think that a big epic novel and feature film are the same. It's a lie. A feature film is much closer to a short story actually. ~ Pirjo Honkasalo

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

One of the great things about being an actor is it serves a short attention span, which is something I have. ~ Allison Mack

In the end, neither fretting nor bravado could distract him any longer from the thought that he was fatherless. He and his father had in their jocular, gingerly fashion loved each other, but now that his father was dead, Joe felt only regret. It was not just the usual regret over things left unsaid, thanks unexpressed and apologies withheld. Joe did not yet regret the lost future opportunities for expatiation on favorite shared subjects, such as film directors (they revered Buster Keaton) or breeds of dogs. ~ Michael Chabon

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

And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then ~ Salman Rushdie

There's no such thing as "an auteurist filmmaker." Every film directors is an auteur. We only make films that we do because we cannot put on clothes that don't fit us. ~ Lee Yoon-ki

A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit. ~ Danny Boyle

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

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

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director. ~ Jodie Foster

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

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it. ~ Aaron Johnson

Here's what I like about God: Trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, a lot of his creatures are funny-looking, and he made it all anyway. He didn't let the aardvark convince him he had no business designing creatures. He didn't make a puffer fish and get discouraged. No, the maker made things - and still does. European film directors often enjoy creative careers, during which their films mature from the manifestos of angry young men to the rueful wisdom of great works by creative masters. Is an afternoon siesta the secret? Is their vita just a little more dolce? We've taken espresso to our American hearts, but we haven't quite taken to the "break" in our coffee breaks. Worried about playing the fool, we forget how to simply play. We try to make our creativity linear and goal oriented. We want our "work" to lead somewhere. We forget that diversions do more than merely divert us. ~ Julia Cameron

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

I go into a young film director's office these days and he says, 'Hey man, I know who you are. I grew up watching 'McHale's Navy'. And I think, 'Oh boy, here we go again'. ~ Mako

Yes, I was hired by Universal because they needed a comedy director. They had seen Scandal and liked it. I saw an opportunity even in those comedies to begin my project of American films. ~ Douglas Sirk

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story. ~ Donnie Yen

I love those films where I feel the director's confidence - where he doesn't need to overdo it with the shots and the cuts. ~ Jean-Marc Vallee

I think movies say a lot [about real life], even more than theater. It says a lot about the invisible, that movies are so fascinating. The camera lens is like a microscope that goes beyond the surface. It's like you're exploring a secret, so you explore the director's secret, you explore the actor's secret, and therefore you explore the universe's secrets. ~ Isabelle Huppert

I find that as long as I'm acting it doesn't matter if it's for TV, or a series or a short film. I always have fun no matter what I'm doing. ~ Jodelle Ferland

In a film, you always try to have your main character be changed by the end. ~ Frederic Tcheng

First I did animation films, when I was young, in time-lapse. And then in the '80s I went directly to video. The main reason for that was that I could control all the steps. ~ Pipilotti Rist

David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands. ~ Richard Attenborough

[Orson Welles] was a man who made the greatest film ever made and was never forgiven for it. ~ Roger Ebert

Great directors turn in mediocre work and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. ~ Thomas Jane

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy. ~ Roger Ebert

The secrecy thing has gotten to be more and more prevalent in films, and maybe that's good. It's nice to go see a film and not know anything about it. Sometimes I feel like we know too much about films. ~ Karen Allen

Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel. ~ William S. Burroughs

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it. ~ Roger Ebert

Once you crack the script, everything else follows. ~ Ridley Scott

'Mafiosa' was written by Veronica Russo. It's her first time making a film, and I'm really proud of her because this woman has a full-time job, and she decided one day, 'You know, I want to write a film, and I want to make it.' ~ Katrina Law

When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment. ~ Leonard Maltin

If I start paying attention to the mechanics of a film while watching it, then it's generally a bad film. ~ Terry Zwigoff

I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I'm sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like 'Black Hawk Down,' and I could also totally do horror. ~ Neill Blomkamp

From one side what Steve Jobs has planted in his brain "That everyday is his last day..." - is a great idea and I can support it. But to think that everyday will be your last they won't be some kind a wanting to die soon or to be more close to say to fate "Come here, I want to die. Please take first my soul then the other people soul?". Sometimes by doing this and saying in my mind I feel like this I challange the fate. You can check out the film about Paul Averhoff - Check out what this guy has done he is runner, but look what happen in his life! ~ Deyth Banger

It's time to sort of get back to a basic message, the message that was given. At this time, the world has gone nuts, I think. And this film speaks
well, Christ spoke of faith, hope, love and forgiveness. And these are things I think we need to be reminded of again. He forgave as he was tortured and killed. And we could do with a little of that behavior. ~ Mel Gibson

In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in beginningless and endless time. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It's what you don't see that keeps you on the edge of your seat in any kind of film - leave it to the imagination of the viewer. ~ Christopher Lee

If you take the time and put in the effort to write your own material and absolutely refuse to be denied the right to make your film it is difficult whatever colour you are. ~ Denzel Washington

Baz Luhrrman's movie Romeo and Juliet is what made me decide that I wanted to dedicate my life to making films one way or another. ~ Kelly Blatz

The more of those little light bulbs that can turn on the better. Eventually you'll have enough to light up a movie screen. ~ A.D. Posey

It's a funny thing with the inspiration thing. There's always loads of music around that I absolutely love and films going back to when I started making film music in the mid-80's. ~ Steven Price

For me, two of my favourite science fiction films are Blade Runner, which is fantastic, and Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. Both of those were smart science fiction films hitting more of a medium budget, and I desperately hope there is an audience for that kind of film because I would love that to be my next film, on that kind of scale. ~ Duncan Jones

We write for actors and even down to the smallest character in the film, they all have their moment. You take that and you put it in a story that's in your face and there's tons of hardcore R action, nudity and you name it, but at the same time there really is a story there. It's got heart and at the end of the movie people will feel it. So I hope they'll their friends and want to see more. ~ Todd Farmer

When it's good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person's life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I'd never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

At its best, film should be like a ski jump. It should give the viewer the option of taking flight, while the act of jumping is left up to him. ~ Michael Haneke

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: "Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?" She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. "Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?" This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that line. That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding. ~ Haruki Murakami

I built my [early] career on negative reviews. There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square. They hated my movies. You could never have that happen today. Critics are way too hip. ~ John Waters

When you look at all of the male characters on television and in film, it's not like every one of them are the people doing the right thing that you can point to as your own moral compass. ~ Ari Graynor

With any independent film, it's all about getting everyone's schedules in line and everything together at the same time and just doing the best you can do when that happens - if it happens. ~ Jennifer Westfeldt

When you're watching an action movie, you experience an action movie more outside of the aquarium, you're out of the aquarium looking in at all the swimming fish that are in there. Whereas horror films and thrillers are designed to put the audience into that box, into that aquarium. ~ James Wan

We're in a situation now where fewer and fewer small films get made. People want these big giant tentpole sort of things, and I don't know, it's getting harder and harder to make a small movie. ~ Paul Reubens

Like everyone else, I try to do quality work with great directors. But much of it has to do with luck. ~ Dermot Mulroney

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. ~ Werner Herzog