Judd Apatow Quotes

You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.

Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.

A director should concentrate on his storyline and his characters.

What you cut out becomes part of the story you tell.

Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.

I seldom get into the mood of the story. It's acting. I go in, I act, I quit. I don't take anything away from it.

As a writer, you have to be willing to kill your darlings, and I'm a writer first. As a director, I've got no problem cutting the scenes.

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.

Marty [Scorsese] knows that when an improvised moment comes out of a real situation, it's gonna have more life and more going on than anything you can imagine and that's how the character can become the story

I don't generally derive my stories from novels. I try to turn into film things I have felt or experienced.

Separate the story - your story - from facts.

Even if you're doing something that the studio sends you, or something that's based on a book or story, at the end of it all, you try to make whatever it is your own. This is based on my love of horror movies. Everything is based on something, in some way.

I know the pleasure you get from making your films. The intense involvement in every aspect: the acting, the camera, the colors, the costumes, even the hair and makeup. Editing is thrilling. Everything to do with films is absorbing - everything but the money part, the business. But I'm deeply glad I've had that experience.

My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene.

I want to tell beautiful stories. I know I want to tell stories that appeal to a large audience. I want to make movies that appeal to mass culture.

Structure is important in film, but there's often structure to be found in the most unlikely of places! It's quite possible to build a structured story and retain idiosyncrasy.

The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.

I always make mistakes and I always fix things up, as best I can, in the cutting room.

You have to be a great storyteller. And you have to master the tools that you have to tell the story which are, inorder of importance, the script, the actors and then thetechnical means.

There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you.

If you're gonna let the character be the story, you better set a tone that allows the actors to do the best work they can do.

The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.