Errol Morris Quotes

Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.

I made 'Batman' the way I made every other film, and I've done it to my own satisfaction - because the film, truly, is exactly the way I wanted it to be.

I always say that AMC hires filmmakers, and they let them be filmmakers.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

Studios never put pressure. They know the kind of films I want to make.

Hitchcock had to fight to the death to make his movies.

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.

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

I believe that every director's films reflect their lifestyle.

I think it's possible to be free in a big production. It's the eye of the director and the actor and the story.

I'm in total control. I write the songs, decide what to sing and how to sing. I even control the recording process. But, with a film, there is no control at all.

I don't quite know what an auteur is.

Some of our favorite films are obviously not written by the person who directed it. And yet a 'Taxi Driver,' or some Nicholas Ray movie, like 'In a Lonely Place,' seems so personal or obsessive or whatever.

'Easy Rider' and 'The Last Movie' were the only films that I made totally on my own.

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

I love having the control over the end result and not having to go through some committee to get something approved. I feel sorry for people, like actors, because unless you're Woody Allen or Mel Gibson, they don't have much say in the decisions that affect their work.

My first feature, I made in France. There's a great respect for the author there - they don't change your stuff.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

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?

When I get to make a movie, I really try to make it on my own terms.

I'm not someone who has to make a film at any cost. I have to find the right way to make it or not at all.

I never wanted to be an actor. Because when you're an actor, you depend on other people to come to you with scripts. You can't create your own. Unless you are a Raj Kapoor, who was a producer-director.

It is easier to make a film but difficult to make it on your own terms. In that sense 'Madras Cafe' was a very satisfying experience.

I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script. There are certain people that are auteurs, and you accept them regardless of whether you see a script or not. But Spielberg is not an auteur.

Partly why I love to operate is that I love to watch an actor within a shot. When you watch a shot, and you know that everything's come together, I feel I'm the first person watching it. I always get pleasure out of that.