Max Riemelt Quotes

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

Every movie has its uniqueness. You just do your best and go with it.

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

Usually, you lose interest in a story beyond a certain point. But with 'Highway,' there was something very subtle, yet something very influential. I intended 'Highway' to be the first film that I ever made. Didn't happen.

There are many aspects to directing that have a romantic place in people's minds.

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

When you're actually making the film, you're constantly battling to maintain its integrity.

Only amazing designers think of the truly new.

For me, the most important thing is the writing - and certainly the director. But if the writing isn't there, it doesn't matter who the director is!

I don't write on set. I also - in a funny way, I don't really differentiate between the writing and directing. I think it's all sort of the same thing.

The movies sort of tell you what they want to be as you're writing them.

I think I'll always be making movies that intend to say something new.

As a filmmaker, the only way that I understand how to make a film is holistically.

There's more to directing than plotting scenes out.

I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.

What should be driving the conversation is: What's the story? What's the movie about? Is it a compelling story? And if it is, then you make it regardless of the color of the people behind or in front of the camera.

If you have a vision or if you believe the director has a vision, then at least you've got something to talk about, something to try and head to and I think that's mandatory for every director to have to do a good job.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

You create a little world when you are making a film and you have to feel that you would want to be a part of that world. I sometimes look at the scripts I get and think 'what are they thinking?'

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.

The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.