Quotes About Directing

The first thing I look at with a project isn't who's directing, whether it's a big film; it's the character and whether I want to tell her story.

I'm a bigger fan of my directing than in acting. Acting is just harder. You know, not harder, per se, because directing is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But it's harder to enjoy my work as an actor, you know.

I mean, if you are directing actors to do one thing and then directing them to do something else entirely because the one thing you wanted them to do may not work, then you are just shattering their confidence in the project.

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.

If I have one vanity wish, it would be to direct. It's the only thing I haven't done yet that I would like to.

Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.

I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm not being mean to them, but they can't hear you. I don't have a husband, and so I'm not really attuned to it, but I didn't know that they could not really hear you. Like, I'm talking, and they just walk away.

The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them... no one else is writing them for me.

'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

I'd like to direct again, but that's really hard to get something and raise the money. It's difficult to find just the right thing.

I always wanted to be a film-maker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on 'The Simpsons,' which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors and I sort of fell in love with it.

Once I went to film school, I realized that film directing was actually much better than theater directing, because you kind of get to stay in control of it all the way through. You don't relinquish the piece to the actors like you have to in theater; you stay in control through the very end.

I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.

When I realised, on 'The Straits,' that physical work in the theatre takes much longer than directing scenes, it was like a eureka moment. If you want to work physically, you have to accommodate it, and it takes a disproportionate amount of time.

I am drawn to writing and directing as it is most like the feeling I had when I was a teenager with my puppet theatre. You are more in control of everything and involved in every aspect of production, so more challenged and fulfilled.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

I'm really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can't afford to at the moment because we're getting married in September. And then I'm hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay.

Fundamentally, whether directing in the theatre or a film, you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of the form. The thing I had to work hardest at was thinking in shots.

Directing is something I always wanted to do. I started when I was 13 directing scenes in high school and then plays in college with my theatre company.

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.

When I was little, I put on plays for my family at Sunday dinner, and I would direct them and have all my cousins, my brother, and my best friends in it. I was a very imaginative and theatrical child and wasn't afraid of being in front of a camera. It was like make-believe to me.