Mike Binder Quotes

I think every writer has got to direct. If you don't direct, you can't protect your work. The only way to ensure that it's going to be as close as possible to what you put down on paper - and what you see and hear in your head - is to do it yourself.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

The good thing about directing a screenplay that you've written is that you see the film in your head as you're writing it and then you see those decisions through to the end.

I think, as the writer, you're always going to mourn something [left out of a film]. But you also just want to know there's a good reason for it being left out. On the whole, you want to give something to somebody creative. The worst thing you can do is say, "Here, be creative, but do it like I want you to do it." I was always very mindful of that.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

Every script I've written and every series I've produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.

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

When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself. I never try to make a film for the masses. I just try to tell my story.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.

The reason I took on directing a film myself was because, no matter how skilful a director was or how much I liked the film, there'd always be beats where I'd go, 'Oh... well, that's skilful, in a way, but it doesn't get the flavour I'd intended in the script.'

Writers are always sort of threatening to direct, and sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

Filmmaking was the way I could write characters and not have to give them up to anybody.

Interestingly enough, there is a really different dynamic when you're directing something that somebody else has written compared to when you're directing something that you've written. And there's a good and a bad side to it. I think the bad side is that you never feel the same level of connection to the material - you just don't.

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.

The way that I make films is that I sit down and I think, "How much money could I get with less consequences?" And that's how I start. I'd rather have less money and total autonomy than more money and start having to answer to things, because then I'm not being true and the money men are not being true.

If you're directing, it doesn't really matter any more if it's going straight to TV - what matters is whether you have the resources to make a story that moves you.

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.

I don't want to be a director. I want to direct. There's a difference.

What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.

No matter where I am working, I cannot make a film without 100% creative control and final cut. If there is such a guarantee, I can work anywhere.

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.