Film Director Quotes - Part 1
Famous Diector Quotes

Art is a sense of magic.
--Stan Brakhage

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.
--James Broughton

Jack Nicholson is a textbook actor who's very intuitive. He is absolutely brilliant at going as far as you can go, always pushing to the edge, but still making it seem real.
--Tim Burton

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.
--James Cameron

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.
--Frank Capra

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

I use dancing to embellish, extend or enlarge upon an existing emotion.
--Gower Champion

The funniest thing is that all the things every director goes through, I thought I could shortcut, but there was no getting around those issues.
--George Clooney

We tend to do period stuff because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality.
--Ethan Coen

I do think that's so much a part of what being a director is - in working with actors - to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.
--Bill Condon

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
--Francis Ford Coppola

In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody's got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.
--Cameron Crowe

And I don't think I'm giving away any secrets here, but there are a lot of terrible scripts in this town.
--Frank Darabont

Acting is by far and away the toughest job, in terms of film-making and maybe even the arts. How they do it I don't know, but they have to be allowed to get their satisfaction.
--Jonathan Demme

First cuts are a bitch for a director, because it's been so many months and you put your trust in your editor and you're going to see your film assembled for the first time. You look at it and go, This is terrible. I hate it.
--Richard Donner

Our feeling is that the most important thing on a set is that actors have enough confidence to try different things. If there's stress or tension, they won't go out on a limb because they won't want to embarrass themselves if they don't feel completely comfortable.
--Peter Farrelly

There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.
--David Fincher

Casting is 65 percent of directing.
--John Frankenheimer

I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.
--William Friedkin

Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.
--Samuel Fuller

It takes two years on the stage for an actor or an actress to learn how to speak correctly and to manage his voice properly, and it takes about ten years to master the subtle art of being able to hold one's audience.
--D. W. Griffith

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.
--Taylor Hackford

A theme that has always interested me is the difference between how thing appear and how they are. Image versus reality, etc.
--Curtis Hanson

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!
--Howard Hawks

People watch luck go by them, and they're so blind they never reach out and grab it.
George Roy Hill

One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered. Every story is its own kind of expedition, with its own set of challenges.
--Ron Howard

Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual. I think that's an essential difference in my pictures. I think they are more accurate in portraying young people as romantic - as wanting a relationship, an understanding with a member of the opposite sex more than just physical sex.
--John Hughes

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.
--John Huston

I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.
--Jim Jarmusch

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity.
--Chuck Jones

Movies are art and the spirit of the movie depends on the creators.
--Lloyd Kaufman

To me, thoughts are fun and art is fun. The strength of our society should not be idle entertainments but the joy of pursuing ideas.
--Philip Kaufman

A good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do.
--Elia Kazan

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
--Stanley Kubrick

Everyone has a story.
--Neil LaBute

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

All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.
--Barry Levinson

I think maybe making films is something innate you can't really teach to begin with.
--Richard Linklater

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences - is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.
--George Lucas

For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.
--Sidney Lumet

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.
--David Lynch

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