Cress Williams Quotes

Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.

Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.

In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision.

I think any director is intimidating.

As a second-time director you don't want to be working with someone who's a star that wants you to get down and kiss their feet.

It was okay but then I found myself in that position of being merely a screenwriter. And you are merely the screenwriter, and there's no way around it. You don't have the same clout as the director.

I feel like I don't have much of a preference. With TV, it's just a longer process, so you need to be more sure that you really want to be involved in it for a longer time than you would be with film.

I know when it comes to TV, the writer is king, but to me, the filmmaker is king.

Hollywood is a double feeling. Love and hate. With a talented film director, I cannot resist. They are such charming and intelligent people. But each time, it is very difficult to deal with other people. I have to satisfy other people. The director or the producer. Not me. I have to satisfy myself. But then I have to deliver my music.

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

A movie has its own fate, which often doesn’t depend on the performances of the director and actors.

A man must keep an eye on his servants, if he would not have them rule him.

Movies are certainly a director's medium, so getting the opportunity to work with really good directors is everything to me.

If you see yourself as a kingly type, then you need your serfs and your army and so on around you.

It is a bitter dose to be taught obedience after you have learned to rule.

If you're producing a movie you're involved in every aspect of the movie and that can be daunting and then going and doing a movie where you're just an actor for hire, and you can kind of sit back and giggle where you can see somebody sitting over there wasting time and wasting money.

If thou hast no inferiors, have patience awhile, and thou shalt have no superiors. The grave requires no marshal.

In theater, you're in charge of your performance, and at the end of the day you're the one who gets credit because you're in front of the audience doing it, and in film and TV it's the director who gets to decide when to cut to you on a line, which take he uses.

Movies are grander, with (in my experience) more heavy weight chefs in the kitchen: the studio, the producers, the writers. All of them get to weigh in and you have to listen to all of them because they hired you. With TV, it's a way smaller scale, with only a few people weighing in.

If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.

Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it.

Power always works from the corner office.

Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.