Director's Responsibility Quotes

Not to knock the people who've given me the opportunity; I appreciate all the opportunities I've gotten, but one of the things I think I really learned from the features I got to direct is that your job as a director is everything about the movie. It's to pick a story that's really worth making, and make sure that the basic components are there. You're not just a part of the team. You're really in charge, and the responsibility falls on you if all the components aren't there for a worthwhile film.

Everything is the director's fault - you can quote me on that. There are no excuses.

Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.

I have made 70 or so films. In all my films not a single actor, a single extra, was hurt. Not one. So statistics are on my side when I say I'm clinically sane.

The Coen brothers said something that helped me, "When you put the book down, you have a certain feeling, a certain understanding. That's what they need to feel when they walk out of the theater. That's your job, to literally put this book on film, you won't make a good movie, you'll do no service to anyone.

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

As a director, you can't stop a guy if he thinks something's hysterical, because if you do, then he'll get depressed because he thinks he didn't come up with a good joke. So if a guy's going on some run and it's killing him, and he thinks it's hilarious, you gotta do enough so that he thinks you can use it in the movie.

I feel very strongly as a writer and as a director it is not my job to crush the audience's imagination.

The first must that any director has is to not force his public.

As a director on 'The Office,' there's a tremendous weight that comes with directing features. I was being asked to direct a show that had already won an Emmy for Best Comedy. Steve Carell and the cast had already won the Screen Actor's Guild Awards.

Once I've ascertained that I'm safe and I'm with a director who is taking care of me, then I'm able to go and do what I need to do and know it's not me, it's the story.

Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal.

I can rely on me [being a director], unlike some actors. I never got anything less than what I needed from the lead actor.

Regarding the responsibility that a director has to society, first of all, there are ratings. There's freedom to make films, and freedom to watch them or not. It's not like I take those films to a school and force kids to watch them.

I've cut myself out... I've cut scenes out that I was in and that's when you realize that you've got to make the best movie you can.

Whether I'm directing live action or animation, my responsibility is the same. I have an audience sitting in a theater with their popcorn, and I've got to show them a good time and make them feel something.

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.

A bad audition is usually the director's fault, not the actor's. It's up to the director to get the atmosphere right to get the best out of your auditionees.

In many cases for an actor it's a comfortable position to be in. But it's harder to fail as a director.