I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.
Well, it's so cheesy to say but you can't find a comedy director who makes movies for critics. When a movie does $580 million worldwide, I'm not saying that proves anything except people were enjoying the experience.
I think comedy directors tend to feel a need to justify the bad behavior, and I just never think that. I like bad behavior, I've always liked bad behavior, I'm a fan of bad behavior, and I don't think you have to justify bad behavior.
Directors tend to be more underrated than overrated because it's a quiet job and people don't really understand it.
I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.
I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.
The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.
Because of 'The Birds' and 'Marnie' I was, as the expression goes, hot in Hollywood and producers and directors wanted to hire me.
Sometimes when you're doing a comedy, the director will yell out "alts" and then the director gets the first laugh.
I'm friends with [David] Fincher. [James] Cameron gives me advice. I know a fair amount of directors who have been through it, and they all felt pretty confident that I would be fine when I got my shot. So their confidence made me feel confident.
[Director Richard Tanne] was inspired by their [Barack and Michelle Obama] flirtation, and their connection. That's not normal with politicians who are married - they usually look forced or awkward.
I always feel like the less you say when you're making a movie, as a director, is the best. That means everything's going great.
Not many French producers work the American way. In France, the director decides everything, he has final cut. I'm trying to do things differently, without the Luc Besson solution.
Establishing what the vision is and being able to stick to it is the job, and everyone should be on the same page, going in. With that said, first-time director or not, you never know what you're going to get.
Great directors turn in mediocre work and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know.
When you're a screenwriter, it's like being a mechanic. You open the hood of the story, the director is the driver, and he says, "What do you think? It's a little tough."
John Huston was the kind of director that totally left you alone. Not every actor always does it right, every time, but most of the time he was re-directing someone. He was making tight adjustments, and not even in terms of interpretation because he knew that by the time that the character had been filmed... well, he got it right when he cast you.
It's either because of the number of times the scholar puts the boot into Peter Jackson the director of The Lord of the Rings films or is making a point they have never heard of.
I'm more prone to anarchy than I am to control - even though I'm a film director.
I was thrown in the deep end at 18 when I got cast in a movie that I didn't audition for. The director just sort of found me and put me in a film, so the decision was really made for me.
I love Ben Affleck so much. He's an amazing director.
Unlike a lot of British directors, I hadn't done any theater. But, I had a great mentor who said, "What you're looking for is exactly the same thing you've done in your documentaries, which is moments of emotional truth.
The directors I consider really great have the ability to recognize when something's going in an unexpected direction and see it as a bonus and be able to go with it, as opposed to locking down what they thought was going to happen.
When I got the script for Thelma & Louise, when I met with the director, Ridley Scott, I said, "I don't want to do a revenge film. I'm not interested in doing that moment in the script after they shoot the truck, where it says they jump up and down and they're real happy about it".
Most development doesn't make it to series. So you want the writer and director to have a really good experience with development because, if it doesn't work out, you want to work with them again. You have to know their work really well, know the drafts really well, and when you give notes, you need to have really thought them through.
