The relationship between a director and an editor in documentaries is so important.
I've tried to stay out of the frame more as a director.
I think one of the reasons movies are the quintessential modern art form is that it is partially a business. The director needs a crew - the writer, the producer, etcetera - and to have that, he needs money.
I miss the comraderie of live television - the fact that you were on the set, you worked closely with the director and the cast, that I miss. But, no, I'm happy, I'm happy doing film.
An Ingmar Bergman film would probably owe a sizeable bulk of its import and its direction and its quality to the directorial end and to the director because it's uniquely a Bergman film. But that again is not the general - no, that's much more the exception than the rule.
The choice that you really have is that you can go and work for TV which is so badly paid that you have to really churn them out which I think probably helps you develop certain muscles. I'm not sure though that you really want to have those muscles as a director.
You can make five massive hits in a row and still not get cast by the directors you want to work with, doing little movies. There are no guarantees. I'm trying to sign up and do movies that I'll be proud of, if it's my last one. That's how I think about it.
You can make five massive hits in a row and still not get cast by the directors who you want to work with doing little movies.
It's hard to be reverent today when directors make films that are not as good. There will be time later, though, when their lesser films are forgotten and just focus on the greatness.
My memorization skills aren't that great so I need help in that area. As far as everything else, I listen to the director. I'm someone who doesn't argue. I hit my marks and say the lines.
John Huston is more of a creative director than most.
Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.'
Every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing, and that's the character.
The thing I loved the most about being art director was picking the photographers and working with them.
You will never see'Altman's Great Film of the Seventies: The Director's Cut' because you have never seen a film of mine that wasn't the director's cut. I have never permitted it.
If there is one thing that, as a director, you don't want to be a part of, it's a group. It's the same thing with music. I don't want to be a part of a scene. Just leave me alone. It's just my nature, and it's nothing against the people that are in that group, but I just like to be left alone.
As far as directors, I'm a big fan of any kind of Billy Wilder stuff. Anything he does.
When you do improv, you're everything. You're a performer, writer, and director, because you're moving the scene in the direction you want it to go, you're making it up as you go, and you're acting it.
It was actually the opposite of what a director once said to me. He said, 'Remember, everyone is here to serve you.' And as he walked away, I thought to myself, 'It's exactly the opposite: I'm here to serve everyone.
I have such amazing memories [about The Hotel New Hampshire movie], because Tony Richardson was such an amazing director, and the subject matter was so bizarre, and yet it was the most sought-after part at that moment. And then it had the good fortune to come out on the same day as Splash.
No two directors make the same film the same way.
I love being on set, because I've basically grown up on a set. And now I love to contribute as a director and help steer the ship, if you will.
I never think of myself as a celebrity - or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director.
I see myself much more as a writer/director or at least an aspiring writer/director - not necessarily in film.
A successful director is someone who has the combination of skills that you can learn, but there's also an intuitive sensibility that they bring to it, that they've developed on their own and that is singular to them.
