Michael Douglas Quotes

As a director, I love being able to really be a contributing factor to the overall vision of a project.

I am not the kind of director who sits in a chair smoking a cigar talking with a microphone to 10 assistants. I need to move. To touch. To put a painting on a wall. To arrange a set.

Gary Ross is amazing. He's just - he always has a billion ideas of what he wants, but has a very clear perspective also; he just makes it work. He really does. He's trying different things and making everything look amazing.

I'm better suited to be a director, I think. I see myself as the general author. I hate the word 'auteur,' because it sounds so solitary when filmmaking is anything but solitary.

When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals, and they talk a good game, I get really interested in the world that they're trying to create.

I've worked with a lot of directors who really don't have a sense of what the hell they want.

Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.

The dynamics of film directing and fashion design - in the ways that I've done it - were not dissimilar.

You need these experiences. Just know that sometimes, the director has a specific look in mind.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

I think I would like directing. I really like coming at the work that way.

I respect the fact that a director has studied the text and the road map of work before us, the subtleties, interconnections, underpinnings... His job is to paint the entire picture and knows all the colors that have to be in it.

When you're the showrunner, you're the person that's in control of most of the details, and to be able to take all that and then to step right behind the camera and to have a direct line of communication with the crew and with the actors - to not be delivering that through another person - is pretty freeing and extremely stimulating.

Mike Schur knows exactly what everything should look like but, at the same time, is super collaborative and loves working with actors that make choices and bring stuff to the table.

Often, particularly towards the end of the process, I think of myself less as a theatre director and more as someone who just directs the traffic. My job is to move the ideas and bits of the show into the places where they work best. Sometimes my job is also to say, 'No.'

I'm like a conductor. I come up with ideas, and I get all these people to make great music together. I have a team of really talented assistant designers. I have architects in my office. People I trained from the beginning in menswear, womenswear, and home. I have a great team who know what I want and feel and translate that into beautiful results.

Directing is quite a nuts-and-bolts thing. It's a mixture of creating an atmosphere in which actors can feel safe enough to be dangerous.

I always want everything I do to be somewhat cinematic. I don't want to be the rapper that'll just post up and shoot a video anywhere with no real meaning to it.

Directing is a very, very difficult job.

Unlike so many producers who sit in their offices and operate from there, I take pride in calling myself a creative producer.

I think when I work with artists, I'm at their service, and I'm at the service of either their vision or a vision that we find together and we share.

For me, doing all the TV stuff and having the experience directing, knowing what you want to make is 90% of it. The rest of it is just guiding everybody on that one path. But, figuring out the path is the difficult part.

I pride myself in collaborating and being a creative director, and creative direction isn't putting my opinion first. It's supporting an artist so they get the most out of the project.

Film is always a fight because you're the person, as the director, with a clear picture in your head of what you think is really exciting, and you're just trying to convince a bunch of other people to buy into that.

I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.