Movie Director Quotes

I think it's 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

A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there. ~ Spike Lee

It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law. ~ Cecil B. DeMille

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. ~ Mark Waters

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you. ~ Billy Wilder

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

In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the US, I'm a bum. ~ John Carpenter

Bill Gates is said to be Aspergian. Musician Glenn Gould is said to have been Aspergian, along with scientist Albert Einstein, actor Dan Aykroyd, writer Isaac Asimov, and movie director Alfred Hitchcock. As adults, none of those people would be described as disabled, but they were certainly eccentric and different. ~ John Elder Robison

Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie. ~ David Fincher

Nothing beats novel writing because it's complete expression of you. You just control everything. Not even a movie director has that level of control. ~ Tom Perrotta

The surviving human beings there could do nothing but wait for the end to come. They chose different ways to live out their final days. That was the plot.** It was a dark movie offering no hope of salvation. (Though, watching it, Aomame reconfirmed her belief that everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.)
**
On the Beach, the 1959 movie, director: Stanley Kramer, writer: John Paxton, starring: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire & Anthony Perkins. On the Beach, the 1957 novel, writer: Nevil Shute. ~ Haruki Murakami

Being movie director you've got the art department, you've got the actors, you've got the camera department, you've got make-up and hair, and props. You've got your finger in all these pies, and you're making sure that everything cooks at the right temperature. ~ Michael Fassbender

The only safe thing is to take a chance. ~ Elaine May

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

The Vietnamese Hoa were merchants and manufacturers. They were very successful and thus, according to the logic of Marxism, responsible for society's failures. The Hoa suffered the same fate as the pizza parlour in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing except at the hands of the world's fourth largest army instead of a small, petulant movie director. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Some very eminent critics writing in the decades immediately after the novel's publication felt that Eliot failed to maintain sufficient critical distance in her depiction of Ladislaw
that she fell in love with her own creation in a way that shows a lack of artistic control and is even unseemly, like a hoary movie director whose lens lingers too long on the young flesh of a favored actress. Lord David Cecil calls Ladislaw 'a schoolgirl's dream, and a vulgar one at that,' while Leslie Stephen complained 'Ladislaw is almost obtrusively a favorite with his creator,' and depreciated him as 'an amiable Bohemian. ~ Rebecca Mead

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

A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say ~ Michael Winner

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street. ~ Robert Doisneau

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

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting. ~ Brian De Palma

I'm a curious person. I pursue things based on what sparks my interest. I'm not thinking about what role I play. I don't have to be a movie director or this or that. I just want to be part of projects and places that are of interest to me. ~ Roman Coppola

Because of Stephen King, horror movies don't scare me. There is nothing a horror movie director can do to me that Stephen King hasn't done already. ~ E.H. Kern

There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave. ~ Clark Gregg

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

I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's, to go back and reinvent a movie. ~ Oscar Isaac

Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater. ~ Roman Polanski

A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. ~ Jean-Luc Godard

I detest producing. I mean, I feel like I do it to enable myself to do all the other stuff that I do love, but I find it's in conflict with the other roles because the producer needs to be the one who says "No" and the director and the writer need to let their mind be free. ~ Julie Davis

When you hear that you're going to be working with a first-time director, sometimes that can be a concern to people. ~ Will Ferrell

Are you crazy? The last thing you want to do is make a scene." "Well, I'm gonna make a movie if you don't show me some respect. ~ Sister Souljah

You must understand that violence in a movie is only a tool. If it's used badly, it will be horrible. If it's used correctly, it can be very interesting. But, essentially, it's just a tool. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

To be in a movie directed by Wolfgang Petersen, and a movie that had a large budget ... I got a taste of what really good filmmaking could be. ~ Gary Cole

I'm very focused when I'm making a movie, but I'm also a fantastic multitasker. ~ Melissa George

My mind is like the valley - this vast barren waste. Car lots. Malls. Tract homes. I know there are other worlds beyond it - of canyons full of coyote and monarch butterflies, squirrels, bunnies, purple and yellow wildflowers, of magical boulevards lined with palatial movie theaters and movie-star haunted mansions, of parks and palms and palisades, especially, especially of the ocean, where it all ends and everything begins. I know the rest is out there but from where I sit in my head it's like being on the bottom of a hot sunken pit - you can't see anything else around you no matter how hard you try. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Just because you have teenagers in a movie doesn't make it a teen movie. ~ Brendan Fehr

We might think we know how we are being affected by the media - a book, a movie, a TV series. Ironically, this so-called awareness, the "third person effect," is most common with, according to Gierzynski, "those with higher education." He notes that "we think we know how the media affects us," but in truth, it controls us more than we know. ~ Anthony Gierzynski

Stars are rare creatures, and not everyone can be one. But there isn't anyone on earth - not you, not me, not the girl next door - who wouldn't like to be a movie star holding up that gold statuette on Academy Award night. ~ Sue Mengers

Diane Keaton, I've worked with her as a director, and I think she's a really intelligent woman. I like the fact that the things that make her feel beautiful are more than just her face; it's who she is, and I live by that same theory. There are things I want to achieve in my life intellectually that make me feel beautiful. ~ Andie MacDowell

The unique idea of [The Darkest Time] movie is because in usual if you are in darkness, you are scared. But this movie is the opposite. In darkness, you are okay. ~ Timur Bekmambetov

I think acting is only one part of the piece of the movie. I'ts an important piece, but I'd like to be involved in all the other aspects of making movies. ~ Stephen Dorff

Just by nature, I think in comedy. I think in sketches and what have you. In every drama or action movie I've been in, I have to make a concerted effort not to turn it into a comedy. Every shot, before action is called and after cut is called, I'm usually in some goofy head space. It feels natural to me. ~ Michael Jai White

I still remember 1997 when I made the movie 'Storm Riders;' that moment, a lot of American producers want to hire me to make movies in the States. ~ Andrew Lau

I've peered into every window, making sure Sthenno isn't within, and am about to concede defeat and return to the meeting place when my light flashes over a small reflective surface back at the far end of the hall.
I sigh.
"This is the place in the movie," I whisper, "when the audience yells for the heroine to run. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

People never regret when they come out of a movie and they've been crying. I think people need it. That's why people have the theater and live music, which is dwindling as well. I think people like to go see things and have an emotional, transcendent, universal human experience, but so often we're like, "Let's go watch Green Lantern," which we all know is just not going to do anything for our souls. ~ Daniel Gillies

The longer you work in this business [movie], the more you start to be able to see the carpentry. You can see where things are going, and it's harder to surprise you, as a reader ~ David Benioff

I'm kinda disapointed that Canada isn't like the South Park movie said it was. ~ Joel Madden

Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

I love vampire movies. I think they are sexy. ~ Marguerite Moreau

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it. ~ John Le Carre

It wasn't until the movie came out that it all changed for us. Some people say it was the start of Ten Years After, but in another way, it was the beginning of the end. ~ Alvin Lee

I feel like a movie star," Daphne said as the girls hurried downstairs. "You look like a mental patient," Sabrina remarked. ~ Michael Buckley

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie. ~ John Sayles

And I think being a good director is being able to be completely tyrannical and you've got to be an absolute dictator while at the same time, you have to listen and see everything because it can all change on a dime. ~ Bob Balaban

My favorite newer movie is "Training Day." Denzel Washington is, to me, one of the greatest actors ever. The way he gets into those roles is ridiculous. ~ Virgil Green

I think all minority audiences watch movies with hope. They hope they will see what they want to see. That's why nobody really sees the same movie. ~ Arthur Laurents

Once I've ascertained that I'm safe and I'm with a director who is taking care of me, then I'm able to go and do what I need to do and know it's not me, it's the story. ~ Julianne Moore

Every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing, and that's the character. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

There's an Elvis movie on the marquee sign, we've all seen at least three times. ~ Hal Ketchum

But when you work with the director and the real person who is playing opposite you, it changes everything. You are almost in a working session. I was very comfortable, and that's maybe what helped me to get the part. ~ Olivier Martinez