Tommy Wiseau Quotes

I would like to direct good actors, and there are good actors who are stars.

Stepping out of the director's chair completely and into a scene as an actor was weird. It was more excitement about directing than anything, but I was on a high from being a director and enjoying that process so much that going back to being an actor was almost secondary because I really was loving directing.

I love working with actors. If you cast the right person in the right part at the right time, they make you look like a better writer and director than you really are.

I'm pretty sure a lot of directors would be thrilled to cast age appropriate roles. I am.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

As a director, it became important to hear that specific role read by that specific actor, and you hear the chemistry, or you don't hear the chemistry. So I'm not so bothered by the audition process anymore; in fact, I use it. It's a time for the actor to actually get to the know the director and the producers a little bit, too.

You just start going through that process of trying to put together a cast that works. I don't know that I can explain it in a way that you can go, 'Oh.' It's a little bit like saying, 'How would he be with him? How does that feel?'

What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Audiences, whether they're seeing a film or a reading or whatever it is, a concert, they decide very quickly what kind of show it is, and then they judge it. They judge the rest of the thing by whether it conforms to their rules for what a good symphony orchestra would be.

I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.

There are a lot of actors who will watch the monitors. They'll do a scene, and then the director will look back to see if he got whatever he wanted. I just find it odd to sit there and watch yourself. But if you can be objective, I can see how it's really useful as a tool, especially if you're doing something physical.

When I have failed as an actor I've always thought it was my fault. But when I direct something, I wouldn't want the actors to think it was their fault.

All the actors I've worked with as a director over the years I really love and I thought they were all right for the part.

My main interest in being a director, and the most important thing to me, is that world with the actors.

I've had a couple opportunities where I've been on the other side of the audition process as a director.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

I wanted to know as the director how the actors wanted to tell this story I wanted to know what they thought.

Take it from a director: if you get an actor that Sandy Meisner has trained, you've been blessed.

I've had the pleasure to work with a lot of very great actors. And they're too different to say who's the best.

I'm not tough when it comes to people criticizing the people that I protect, and those are the actors. It makes them scared to do it again for another director.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors. Or, theater is for actors as cinema is for directors. I started in theater. Filming is as complete as directing film. In theater, you are there, you have a character, you have a play, you have a light, you have a set, you have an audience, and you're in control, and every night is different depending on you and the relationship with the other actors. It's as simple as that. So, you are given all the tools.

Before I go off and direct a movie, I always look at four films. They tend to be The Seven Samurai, Lawrence Of Arabia, It's A Wonderful Life and The Searchers.

I'd love to direct, and I think I'd be a great director, but... I've been approved by the studio to direct, which I think is a cool jump of faith for them. Or proof that they're really stupid. But I don't think so.

Honestly, I look at the project and I look at the people attached and I look at the director. If it's a role that I feel will help me, as an actor, then I'll definitely take it.

As a director, I like trying to unlock the subtext of the scene and try to put the camera in a place that helps that.