John Hillcoat Quotes

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

I want to be associated with films that are content-oriented.

I'm a very creative person, and you know when I hooked up with Benny Boom, I said I want it to be a different kind of video. I want it to be crisp, and I want it to relate, [and] not to be so far over people's heads. And that's when we came up with the p-t-d-d-d-d-d (camera flashes.) You know with the picture changing, and that's it.

All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.

Every commercial covers different ground, different ideas, and it's my profession to direct and to tell stories - for me, it's very organic.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

A choreographer deals with the movement that you create, and with a creative director it's about the story, the stage, the lighting, the costuming, executing someone's idea, choosing how far to go or how little to go, and blending it so that you feel it, you're emotionally effected.

I was never one of those people who thought, 'What I really want to do is direct.' It never occurred to me.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

Directing is a unique endeavor where you are in charge of so many people. As a writer, it is sort of the opposite.

The simplest definition of advertising, and one that will probably meet the test of critical examination, is that advertising is selling in print.

I think every movie is its own little world, and a director certainly sets the tone.

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

As a director, I love being able to really be a contributing factor to the overall vision of a project.

It was always my dream to be a director. A lot of it had to do with controlling my own destiny, because as a young actor you feel at everyone's disposal. But I wanted to become a leader in the business.

I'm not an art director; I'm just not. I've always been somebody who has a sensibility that I hope is the same sensibility of others.

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.

A lot of directors don't know what they want to do. Every director I've seen that was a good director that I've admired knew exactly what he wanted to do. They didn't sit there and think about it.

If you want to communicate something, you'd better make sure that your design piece is well-dressed and that its teeth are fixed. At the same time, I still believe that if it is only stylistically great and it has nothing to say, it still is not going to make a lasting impression on anybody.

I'm very strongly in favor of the auteur theory.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.

Good directors say, Here's where the play is. They stand by the heart of the matter. Some of them stand beside it.

I believe that the director is really the soul. It is a collaborative effort, but the director is the one who needs to have that vision. It could be a great script, but it starts from there. You need to have good material, at least, but if you don't have someone with vision, it's just words.