Simon Cowell Quotes

The key is you don't want to control the controlled stuff too much and you don't want to be too free flowing in uncontrolled situations. That can be a contentious issue with some directors. The joy of my career is I've gotten to work with great directors who get that balance.

As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.

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.

Michael Bennett, Tommy Tune and Agnes de Mille fought to be director-choreographers. They were just not going to do it any other way because the choreographer is so often at the bottom of the creative totem pole when you put a show together. So with that power you get a more direct point-of-view and that helps something called style.

As a screenwriter, you always have frustrations. It's just the nature of the job, and you have to live with it. Your vision is not going to be the same as the director's vision. It doesn't mean one is better or worse; it means they're different.

I've never made the film I wanted to make. No matter what happens, it never turns out exactly as I hoped.

I'm a spoilt brat. I thought I was just going to walk in and make movies. But I'd been my own boss for so long that all of a sudden to be facing a roomful of people who were niggling over every little scene... I just thought I'd go back and draw my comics and have a happy life.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

The network shows tend to be run, in general, in my experience, by committee, and it's hard for actors and writers to do their jobs.

Every show I've ever, you know, produced, essentially it's the show I want to watch myself.

One of the things I wanted to do was direct. There've been a couple of times that a director will walk up and say something to me, and all it does is make me mad. Inside I'll go, 'Well, that wasn't helpful at all.'

The experience of both acting and producing has been wonderful. It certainly has created a full plate. But it is very exciting and rewarding to have creative input on the show. 'Reed' is about love and family and for me, playing a hand in shaping it has been deeply gratifying.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.

I don't miss directing at all, and I don't miss screenwriting either because somebody's always telling you to do something different.

The funny thing about directing is that you have your own opinions, but it's a collaboration. Directing is a group effort. Even though you might think something works, the smartest thing you can do as a director is try and weigh the opinions of the people around you.

Directing, what little I know, is as much knowing when to step in as when to step out.

As a director, I never feel that I have the answers.

I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.

I love the experience of getting to direct because I can have all of the fun of helping shape the show, but I don't have to actually do it, so I don't have to deal with the nerves.

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

I'm very opinionated, and when you're put in a position where you're getting the storylines that are not necessarily what's cranking at the back of your mind, or digging at the potential of your character and you have to sit on your hands, that's frustrating.

I worked with a group of people who argued day and night - professors, officials, the Minister of Finance - but there were decisions that I had to make.

I feel that recording a song already compromises the magical music one can create in the mind, so the fewer people watering down this process the better.

I didn't feel compromised as an actor, and allowed other people's fingerprints all over that aspect.