Bennett Miller Quotes

The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel.

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

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

No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

All the director wants is their idea of the movie to be believed in.

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

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

I'm a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don't want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make... of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

More often than not, the experience of shooting the movie has been disappointing and the end product has been a mere shadow of what I hoped it would be. But immersing myself in the story - that's what I like best of all.

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

After directing movies, I respect any director in this world, because making a movie as a director is tons and tons of work.

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

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.

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

I view filmmaking as a director's medium.

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

The subjects have to come with questions for me. I don't make films where I'm a massive fan.

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

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

I loved being asked 2,000 questions a day, storyboarding every move, knowing as though by instinct exactly where the camera had to be, because it was my story.

It's the director's job to piece together my performance, his interpretation of my takes, each take, and string them together and make a statement. I'm red paint on a canvas for a painter.

I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.