Louis Leterrier Quotes

To me, 'director's cut' means that what was released before was somebody else's cut. That, to me, always implies that what was released wasn't what the director wanted.

I've heard directing talked about as being a benign dictatorship, and I think that's probably the best way a director should be. They're open to collaboration and feedback from people, but ultimately, it's got to be that one person's vision. That's what I think makes a film really stand out.

I've always said to people that auteurism is nice, but it's hypothetical, and gradually you learn how much or how little influence different directors had.

I have a very clear vision, and I come from film, where director is God, so if there's a clash, it's painful.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

If Steven Spielberg brought me a movie four hours long and said, 'It has to go out this way,' I guarantee you that's the way it would go out.

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

When we do a movie with the studios, they wouldn't be asking us to do it, I don't think, if it was a movie they wanted to get into themselves. What you see is what you get with us, so they let us do what we want to do.

I enjoy editing when I'm directing, but when someone else is directing, that's their film to cut.

In Europe, the director is the king: it's his vision. It's an auteur tradition.

Films are a director's medium. We're all stemming from the director.

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

I grew up with a concept of cinema as a directorial thing, meaning the director is allowed to sail the ship. Not a dictatorial thing.

We always said that directors work their whole lives to get final cut on a movie. We have that. So why would you want to run away from what every other director is sprinting toward their entire careers?

I'm not a big fan of the George Lucas school of meddling and tinkering. That's a slippery slope.

I think people think of auteurs as being a dictator shouting over everyone about his vision. That's not the way I think of auteurs or the way I work.

As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.

If I could get myself in an editing room, that'd be trouble. I mean, that's how it works, you know? You leave everything on the field. I would pick apart - I do, even on the first time. More than once is just too much self-destruction. I don't need that.

I'm not one of these directors, so far, that wants to have a whole separate director's cut of these things. So far they've turned out to be kind of the length that they wanted to be.

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.

When you produce and direct, your movies are different to you. They're not just something you act in.

Once you walk off the set, if you're an actor, the rest isn't your responsibility, which I like a lot. I'm not responsible for the final product, which is why it's always a pleasure when you see it's in the hands of the people afterwards putting it together.

Actors dread working with studios because they dictate what you do in a way that independent movies can't.

I'm intrigued by films that have a singular vision behind them. A lot of studio movies have ten writers by the time they're done. You have a movie testing 200 times, making adjustments according to various people's opinions. It's difficult to have an undistilled vision.