Orson Welles Quotes

I can't sit on my bum very long in a movie theater seat, and when I'm directing, I always want to move the camera or edit.

I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

I don't work for the commercial success of the film. I work to satisfy my producers who give me the money. I work to satisfy the director who has written a script for me. Of course, I have to satisfy the actor in me, but I want to satisfy them first.

I do believe that there are auteurs, in the sense that there are filmmakers with very strong voices and their voices are communicated on to the screen without a lot of compromise.

You can't be minimalist as a director until you have acquired the experience and confidence to say no.

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.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

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.

I've cut myself out... I've cut scenes out that I was in and that's when you realize that you've got to make the best movie you can.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

The director is the channel through which a motion picture reaches the screen.

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

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

As far as pacing the shoot is concerned, I know when I've got it. I don't think there's any reason to take ten takes unless you need them.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

I have mixed feelings about 'Car 54, Where Are You?' Because we shot it as a musical and whoever the studio head was at Orion, or whoever the powers that be were, cut all but, like, two musical numbers out of it. That is the same as cutting the musical numbers out of 'The Wizard Of Oz'; it wouldn't be that interesting.

There are only so many movies you can direct. And yet there are movies that I want to make sure make it to the screen in as honest a way as possible.

I believe in Danny Boyle. I really do. I know that he's not going to pull the trigger on something if it's not right.

'Hellraiser' was what 'Hellraiser' was. It was a $900k movie, and there wasn't anything I would have done differently. But 'Nightbreed' was taken away from me. It was thought that its meaning wasn't... Its meaning didn't chime with the producers.

We filmmakers are control freaks. For us, it's about bending the elements of a story into existence.

I have always believed that when a film is being made, it has to be the director's vision.

In films, you have to follow the director's vision. Filmmaking is a director's medium. So everything happens as per the script and his vision.

As a writer, it's very difficult to just hand your script over to someone else, especially if you have to watch them hurt it, and that's when I decided I would direct my own work.

Every director works differently but one thing's important: they must have a vision. If they don't have a vision I don't care how they work.

As a loyal believer in the Auteur Theory I first felt editing was but the logical consequence of the way in which one shoots. But, what I learned is that it is actually another writing.