Filmmaking Pressure Quotes

Dad almost died of a heart attack in the middle of making Apocalypse Now, the biggest movie of his life. It doesn't make you want to jump into that business.

I don't think a director should have any kids. I don't even think it's good for your physical health. Even guys in their 30s look exhausted because directors never get enough sleep. What I do is stressful enough.

When you're on set, you're like, 'Everyone's judging me because I'm the director, and everyone thinks I'm doing this because I just love myself and I want to do everything.' Part of it's true: I do want to do everything, and I do kind of love myself.

I think the joy of wanting to direct is having that nervous anxiety knowing your film is about to be shown and you're sitting right there with everyone.

It's always an enormous pressure when you do a sequel. The demands are so high, and it's expensive.

There are endless anxieties in putting a film together, and it's an enormous relief when you know it's working with an audience.

We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.

David Zucker was great! Those guys are funny. I mean, they are funny. There's a wonderful thing about doing that kind of work like Superhero Movie: You have to be real, but you also have to get the laugh. There you are, your director and the producers are right there at the monitors, and you either get the laugh or you don't. And so you just do it until you get the laugh.

I want a movie to be satisfying for an audience. That sense of having to get it done, no matter what cost, is what I like.

The only time you do not get nervous is when you are making your first film. At that time, just the joy of making a movie is so high that you do not care; you are happy to have finally made it. It is only later that you want your film to be seen and appreciated by people.

You always want to make the best film you can. If anything I feel more relaxed after the Oscar. I feel like I have a chance to just tell the stories I want to tell and it's actually been really nice.

Any of us directing at Pixar, whether it's our first time or not, feel a lot of pressure to not make a bad Pixar film.

The desire to avoid meltdowns actually is one of the things that screws up live-action films.

With all the movies I've made about history, it's not really fun because you're trying to get it right. You've got history telling how it was, and then my imagination is telling me how I wish it had been, but I can't go there, so I have to censor myself. I'm very good about stopping myself from creating history that never occurred, but it's frustrating.

When you're a director you always feel weird with another director watching over your shoulder.

Sometimes when you're heavy into the shooting or editing of a picture, you get to the point where you don't know if you could ever do it again.

The network was fantastic, but you get a lot of anxiety with any production. It was very helpful to have both of us because we could back each other up. As a creator, a director and a filmmaker, you often get assaulted and you lose perspective because you have all of this pressure. It was so nice to call him and say, "What do you think?"

It's a treat and daunting to be directing someone like Judi Dench, who's made more films than I'll ever make in my lifetime.

When I talk to some of the younger filmmakers, they are so worried about their films that, eventually, this state of being worried reflects itself in and helps the final work. Whereas, with projects that are meticulously planned, you look at the end result and it is full of emptiness.