John Frankenheimer Quotes

There are lots of people that make movies. It's not just the director.

When you are on the set, you have different departments - you got camera, sound, props, hair, makeup, catering, executives. Imagine each one of those are spokes on the wagon wheel. All the spokes come into a hub: the hub is the director. The wood the spokes go into are distribution and promotion; the steel wheel around the hub is the film. None of these have anything in common with each other.

Truffaut loved actresses, and he was very intense. All the actresses I knew wanted to do a film with him.

A producer is always behind the scenes, even more in the movies - nobody sees you. I didn't even meet most of the actors. When I worked on 'Top Gun,' I never met Tom Cruise. You were always in the background.

I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.

I would love to work with Christopher Nolan, 100 percent.

There's so many people involved in making a film.

For me, the film-maker is more important than the story.

We were doing Scarface many years ago...and I remember having my coffee and looking at the beach, the surf, and I saw a hundred people looking out into the ocean. I thought, what's going on? Did some whale get washed up to shore? So I stood up on the table to see what it was, and it was the director, Brian De Palma, standing there alone by the surf and they were all waiting for him. And I never forgot that because it represented to me what a director is, what a director does.

There were five writers on Blazing Saddles.

I would love to direct a feature and have Robert Connolly produce it. That would be really fab.

Essentially, we wanted to be in one of Azazel's films, so the notion was we'd simply write an Azazel Jacobs movie ourselves, and then give it to him and be like, 'Right, here's you next film, now direct us. Go.'

'Little Princess' was the first big movie that I did in America with big stages where we had kind of a different schedule to work. We had a great production designer, Bo Welch, and we had time to think about the movie in pre-production.

I'd love to work with Woody Allen.

I believe that the director is really the soul. It is a collaborative effort, but the director is the one who needs to have that vision. It could be a great script, but it starts from there. You need to have good material, at least, but if you don't have someone with vision, it's just words.

There are lot of people I'd wanna work with, but Wes Anderson, I would just wanna sit down with the guy. If he would ever put me in one of his movies, that would be the end.

Directors are our teachers, and I'm always craving to work with a great director. They're pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let's put it this way: It'll take me a lot longer to read a script if there's no director attached.

On the set for 'Beetlejuice,' it was before people would go watch on monitors, and directors would be next to the camera.

I'm not put off so much by first-time directors if the script is great. If the script isn't there, I'm not there.

I admire Ridley Scott, and I'm thrilled to be making a movie for him.

When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.

I sign a film based on the story, the role I play, and the maker.

You can start with a great director and great actors and have a great script - and it still just doesn't work. It's kind of a mystery how that happens.

I admire Akira Kurosawa. I have a deep admiration for him and I would love to make films like that.

I wonder if Louis Ferreira would be interested in directing.