Quotes About Directors

'Battleship' is not a film that Francois Truffaut would have made. Nor would any of those other namby-pamby European directors. Nope, this picture eschews that Continental obsession with small stories, set in quaint towns filled with pockmarked folk doing their banal things.

The things that I've enjoyed most are not really science fiction. They are not much fun to make because there are so many toys involved. They are fun for directors who like toys, like Ridley Scott, but they are not a lot of fun to make. A lot of hanging around, changing this and that.

Deep down, all directors feel like frauds - because it's built into the nature of the job. You're the jack of all trades and the master of none. The cameraman knows the camera, the sound man knows the sound equipment - and you? You can't do anything: You can't do the acting, you can't dress the set, you don't record the sound or shoot the images.

I think they're really linked. I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

Some directors cast you because they trust you to do the performance - but then they forget to direct you.

In my experience, the best directors I've worked with hired people for a purpose. They hire them with trust. There's not many notes. There's confidence and support.

The directors you trust the most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they've got the guts to say, 'I don't know.'

I don't want to criticize any other designers, but I have to say that many of the people involved in this industry - directors and producers - are trying to make their games more like movies. They are longing to make movies rather than making videogames.

If things go wrong, they simply don't repay their debt, the old directors walk away, and new ones come in promising to sweep up the mess

Stalin personally controlled a 'Soviet Hollywood' through the State Film Board, run by Boris Shumiatsky with whom he had been in exile. Stalin did not merely interfere in movies, he minutely supervised the directors and films down to their scripts: his archive reveals how he even helped write the songs.

Most actors go, I read the script and fell in love with it; I fall in love with the directors.

So, yes, there's nothing I love more than listening to directors talk about their movies.

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute.

I think great filmmakers will always talk in terms of storytelling. These guys were always about the story. That is how I love to talk about a film.

As more and more films are created as part of a cinematic universe, moviemakers are adopting a similar model. It's the producers, or writer-producers, who create and manage cinematic universes. Directors work in partnership with them and are expected to exercise their creativity within a predetermined set of parameters. A groundbreaking director's bold new creative vision is not what anyone is looking for in the ninth Fast & Furious movie or the sixth Mission: Impossible.

I always felt I wouldn't be able to carry off what the directors require from me. Luckily, I manage.

Most of the time nothing much is required of directors, which is a pity.

Changes are required as far as scripts are concerned. People need to open up and experiment in story lines. But we don't have good script writers, producers or directors. The Punjabi industry lacks cinema knowledge and professionalism. It is the saddest part.

Directors who turn into big babies and shut out criticism stop learning.

I don't know why directors sign on to these projects and completely rewrite everything.

Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.

Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.

It's a real honor to have my stories up on the big silver screen, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It's great fun flying out to L.A. for premieres and meeting all the actors and directors.

When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural.