Director quotes

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

“Cinemascope places a director somewhere between the stage and the screen technique.”
Henry Koster

“On a film set the only person less important than the director is a talent agent.”
John Cassavetes

“I felt the urge to direct because I couldn't stomach what was being done with what I wrote.”
Joseph Leo Mankiewicz

“Mike Nichols is the greatest director ever in films. Why? Because he never had a failure.”
Joseph Edward Levine On Mike Nichols

“First, get a camera, and move it.”

Martin Scorsese

“It's a picture of yourself up there and if they don't like it, they don't like you.”

Martin Scorsese

“Anyone can direct a good picture if he's got a good script.”
Garson Kanin

“Sometimes an actor is intelligent enough to overcome his limitations and discover for himself the proper path to follow — that is, he uses his own intelligence . . . When this happens, he has the qualities of a director.”
Michelangelo Antonioni

“Directing her was like directing Lassie. You needed fourteen takes to get each one of them right.”
Otto Preminger On Marilyn Monroe

“I feel very strongly that the director is supposed to be the boss. Art was never created by democracy.”
Charlton Heston

“No comic can be great in films without two things — a great story which gives you a character to play, and a great director.”
Jack Benny

“I'm too tired and old and rich for all this, so let's do the scene.”

Spencer Tracy

“A lot of young directors really don't understand actors, how to work with them. They're into techniques, effects.”
Robert De Niro

“Cinema is the director's medium. It is written even less than it is acted, but it is primarily the director's medium.”
Charlton Heston

“I'm interested in people, the way they behave. Other directors get their effects by showing doorknobs being turned, things like that. I like to concentrate on the actors' faces.”
George Cukor

“Creation must be total for the director from beginning to end. I'm convinced that the present failure of Hollywood is because of this. To divide, in art, is not to conquer.”
Jean Renoir

“Nothing is too shocking for me. When you tell the story of a man who loses his head, you have to show the head being cut off. Otherwise it's just a dirty joke without a punch line.”
Roman Polanski

“The best films are best because of nobody but the director.”
Roman Polanski

“There's always been one boss on a picture, the director. I haven't always agreed with him, but I've paid attention.”
John Wayne

“It is a formula for a funeral, or for snakes, but not for human beings.”

Fritz Lang

“What I have crossed out I didn't like. What I haven't crossed out I am dissatisfied with.”

Cecil Blount DeMille

“Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture.”
Cecil Blount DeMille

“I didn't write the Bible and I didn't invent sin.”
Cecil Blount DeMille

“I suppose the reason the studios got so powerful is that lots of directors think they don't know anything about business. I'm not sure if I know anything about business or not, but I do believe that they don't know anything about art.”
Dennis Hopper