Tom Drury Quotes

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

What I like most about directing is creating a world more so than anything. To me, the music is the wrapping paper on that world.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.

Actors, their greatest tool, their greatest resource is imagination. You can take things, power objects, you can recruit your dreams, you can access your memories and get there. So the idea is not to act but to just be.

If you take a few days to write an outline, you're just making up scenes that you think will work, that you think will be interesting. But as you write it, other ideas occur - better ideas that have to do with what you're writing.

The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.

I prefer working, period. I think that I like doing film more just because when you get a script, you have the story from start to finish, so you can really find the character's arc, and when you walk away from it, you know you're sort of powerless to what happens.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.

You do a film and you know where you're going, you have this material to stretch and play with as much as possible because you know how it ends.

I have always believed that directing a film is like telling a story. You have to tell it well so that it is appreciated.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

I have never had trouble with any actor being able to visualise things. They are amazing. As long as you have your monster head on a long stick, so you can hold it up there and you can wave it around and let them see it and explain it to them, they are just great.

Acting is about animality. It's great to be allowed to be animal. But I feel more alive as a director. Every morning, I have to write.

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

On a very small scale, I kind of understand why the directors that I work with do certain things. I don't consider myself an incredible director. I'm not ready to do movies by any means. But, I feel like I can be a better actress now that I've been on the other side and kind of understand the process and more of the technical aspects of it.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.

I truly enjoy directing. I enjoy looking at the words on the paper and visualizing how to make them come to life.

A lot of the films now are more focused on the visuals than on the actors. I think all directors should go to drama school.

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould.

Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you've felt, that you have observed.

The thing that really makes me happy is the real work and rehearsing and creating the character and the process of making the movie. Hollywood's not real.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.