Quotes About Directing

I think we'd like to direct. Not so much because we'd like to be directors... we'd like to see how one of our scripts would do if it didn't get changed.

I wanted to express myself more fully through writing and directing. It just feels like a package deal. Anytime you create anything, you try to exert mastery over your world.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

You know, episodic TV directing is a very long and arduous job. You have very short schedules, short short shooting days, and you have to get lot of pages done.

I don't look like the way we've painted directors in our movies and everything since forever. I don't look like an old white guy in a baseball cap. So, yes, there are always moments when people are surprised that I'm the director.

Directing is really exciting. In the end, it's more fun to be the painter than the paint.

My brother's a blast to direct; he's one of those great characters who brings so much to every scene he's in, and we're pals.

I truly enjoy directing. I enjoy looking at the words on the paper and visualizing how to make them come to life.

One thing that everybody told me about directing was, 'Never compromise'. And the whole job is a compromise. So it's very paradoxical. How do you not compromise when the whole thing is about compromise?

I would direct TV. That's a little different. It's more of a contained world as a director. When you're doing a film you get on the rollercoaster, you put the safety bar down and then you're gone. And it's hard. It's hard, too, as a parent, I think, because the hours are so long. It's hard.

It's interesting when women direct. The work is better. They ask more people to participate.

Movies alone have the hideous capacity to do everything for you. So in directing movies, you have to figure how to leave things out - because when you leave things out, you evoke the imaginative participation of the audience.

It's not easy to act, but to direct to act. It goes form one place to the next. It's not heading for the punchline, and also it's not about scoring goals. It's about passing the ball, and the goals will come by themselves.

Directing is a really kind of amazing thing, because you're helping others and, in the middle of that, you have to worry about yourself.

Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

Directing action scenes is really just pure visual storytelling that just makes sense to me pretty intuitively.

When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.

As an actor, I had noticed very vividly that very few directors know how to direct actors because they haven't done it.

It's advice I always give to directors when they're starting out: Take an acting class to really see what it feels like to be an actor. And I have always felt like one of my strengths as a director is that I share a language and a vocabulary with actors.

Actors always feel more comfortable when there's an actor directing, in terms of vocabulary and breaking down a scene.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

I feel very lucky that when I'm burnt out of acting, I take to the pen, and I write something I want to direct. And then, when I'm tired of taking on too much responsibility as a director, I then look for an acting gig. And I've made it very clear that I'm interested in voiceover work. I mean, I'm always looking for voiceover gigs. I love that.

I found in making and directing films that the less you have voiceover, the better it is.

I learned a lot about how to shoot and how to put together sequences.