John Frankenheimer Quotes

Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.

The truth is, it's a totalitarian dictatorship when you're making films. You are the boss. You can listen to other people, and it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but it's a dictatorship nonetheless. A lot of directors go past their first experience, that's what they've come away with.

Sometimes the producer has more say and the director takes what he is given. On other occasions, you don't see the producer very much and the director is the one who it is all about.

To me, the director is the most important, rather than the story.

The rules are: The only ego is the film, and you have to serve the film.

Films are a director's medium. We're all stemming from the director.

I have always believed that when a film is being made, it has to be the director's vision.

I grew up with a concept of cinema as a directorial thing, meaning the director is allowed to sail the ship. Not a dictatorial thing.

If someone is going to talk about the process of making a film, it should be the director.

I don't want to make studio films if I am constantly fighting to assert some kind of leadership within the process. I'm not hired to be a really nice person who comes up with solutions to problems now and then. I'm hired to be the director.

You can only have one voice on set, and that has to be the director.

You can't have cinema by committee if you're trying to do it well.

I'd never directed before and this movie's too important to me to put in the hands of some guy who has never directed. Even if it's me.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

Film work can be very interesting, but it also can be awfully boring because who creates the film? The actors? No. It is the director. It's his piece of work.

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.

You seldom get that in film where you're lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.

In looking at Hollywood and its structure, the director controls the medium, and I want to be in control of certain things. I want to be able to get my own ideas and my own feelings out there, and the only way to do that is to be behind the camera.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

Many times I felt like I'd do better than what the director did, but some of them got a little discouraged because they didn't have full charge of making the film, and sometimes there'd be battles of egos.

When I did 'Stardust,' I was fighting the studio for things I believed were right.