Lenny Abrahamson Quotes

I always believe that one can't interfere in another's work. Once I start work on any film, I surrender myself completely and blindly follow the director.

As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.

Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.

We've been working with the very best in the business. The studio really just let us alone to make the films.

I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

It's the reality: film is a director's medium, and, ultimately, they are the ones that are in charge, and you have to respect that because somebody has to be in charge. But, yeah, you do reach a point where you want to have your voice come out.

As a screenwriter, you have to let go, and you have to hand your baby over and let it go off into the world, which is entirely appropriate.

In many senses, 'Borgen' was a very democratic show. I was always invited to hear the writers' thoughts for the next episodes and allowed to comment on them.

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

It may be tripe, but it's my tripe - and I do urge other authors to resist encroachments on their brain-children and trust their own judgment rather than that of some zealous meddler with a diploma in creative punctuation who is just dying to get into the act.

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould.

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.'

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.

More than anything else, I love to act and leave the rest to my director.

A commission and an original are two different things, and both have their virtues and vices. A commission is a bit more collaborative, in that you outline the story that you think should be told, and then you write it. And then, there are notes and you change it, in the conventional studio system.

I want to direct more often. The job of a producer brings its own benefit as you start to see the simplicity of film making. But yes there is a constant battle between the director and producer in me.

I follow the director's lead because they generally know more about the big picture, but I also trust that the director will give me enough freedom to play.

I believe in doing a nude scene only when I trust the director.

You have to really be able to trust the director. It's about the filmmaker and whether or not I'm going to be able to have a relationship with them and want to follow them down that road, wherever it may lead.

Trust your actors. That's why I work with the same actors time and time again. I encourage them to change the dialogue to achieve one thing: keep the characters honest.

It's always the script first choosing roles. [Then] whoever else is attached. I never like to be the first person attached, because I don't really trust what's going on, unless there's a really good director.

Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.

Once a film gets into production, the actors sometimes begin to have more input than a writer does.