James Watkins Quotes

Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you're out of view.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

There's no way I see myself as a director. Direction is far too creative.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

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.

I would love to direct some day. It's a good job for a control freak.

There is no sense in doing a wonderful script with somebody who can't direct because that is a disaster.

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

Directing feels great; I'm really happy to be doing this.

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

When you are acting, you are just one piece of the puzzle. You don't see how everything fits together. It feels like you have less authorship over the entire product. In directing, you take the entire picture into account, so you're challenged in a different way.

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

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

I thought that Hollywood was just for geniuses and that directors come from three generations of directors. I was worried that I was not up to the challenge of making a movie. Then realized that all a director has to do is know what he wants to do.

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Long before I ever started acting, believe it or not, I always knew I wanted to be a director.

When I'm writing a movie, it's usually pretty close to what the movie is going to be, which is just a luxury of being a writer-director.

When you're writing, it's all up to you, and you don't have to make any compromises. And when you're directing, there's this intense pleasure you get from working with all these really talented people, and pooling the efforts towards a common goal. I like all the aspects of film-making.

Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It's the most personal process ever. It's the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.