Directorial Discretion Quotes

I'm actually one who will encourage directors to cut my lines.

I'm a director. My job is to think how I want to present it. If I want to say [lines] eight times or 10 times, a hundred, it's my choice. I have a certain vision. If you don't have the vision, you don't have the story, you can't be interviewed.

I don't think it's a director's job to peek behind the curtain too much.

I have such a great thing I want to do with Lady Macbeth - make her one of the witches - and I have this whole thing where she's very light and dressed in pink and dancing Gaelic dances and throwing roses, but then when her husband's coming home, she does incantations and pulls her hair back, puts on a black leather trenchcoat. I mean, I could tear it up if somebody would give me the chance! But do you think someone would ever let me do Lady Macbeth? I doubt it. But I'm going to keep talking about it.

I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules.

I don't know why directors sign on to these projects and completely rewrite everything.

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

Most actors who direct do it because they've been directed by so many bad directors.