Tim Robbins Quotes

As a filmmaker, the only way that I understand how to make a film is holistically.

I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

For me, I see filmmaking as art.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

There are many aspects to directing that have a romantic place in people's minds.

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

For me, the most important thing is the writing - and certainly the director. But if the writing isn't there, it doesn't matter who the director is!

As a filmmaker, I'm a collaborator first.

John Boorman was the best director I've ever had.

As a director, when you embrace a project, you try to understand as much as you can about its world, and you do that by embracing and engaging with people who are in that world. Then it's down to your best instincts, which is what most directing is about anyway.

In order to make a film, you have to operate on many different levels, making all these different forms of expression converse, and so I just followed that intuition.

Directing is a tremendous art.

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

The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I've been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it's definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else's.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

Film work can be very interesting, but it also can be awfully boring because who creates the film? The actors? No. It is the director. It's his piece of work.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

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

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I'd made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors.