Ken Burns Quotes

I prefer to believe it's my responsibility if a film of mine works or doesn't work.

I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision.

An artist is his own fault.

If you're putting your name on something, it's really important to be a part of it, or else people will just do whatever they want with it. And then it's not really you, and it won't be true.

As a producer you have creative control, and that's what is so exciting about it. At the end of the day, if you have made a film it's totally your responsibility, and if it works it's your responsibility and if it doesn't it's also your responsibility.

I'd like to be able to be like a director, like Richard Brooks, say. And be able to say, 'I did my best, and this is it, and there's nobody to blame but me.'

I'm willing to take the blame if the strip goes down the drain, and I want the credit if it succeeds. So long as it has my name on it, I want it to be mine.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'

Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.

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.

Some people make movies for money or glory and will take any subject people offer them. But I cannot do that. I need to feel the story and make it mine.

I stand behind all the lyrics I've ever written; I don't have a problem with that.

I want all of my films to belong to me.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

There is an isolated experience to being a director. It's very communal because there's a crew, but it's only you. You're the one on the hook.

The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is asocial... his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.

We don't want other people poking into our artistic pie.

I have been very lucky to have final cut in all my films; everything that is wrong in them is my fault.

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.

Well, Barry, it's your film. So if it rises or falls, you're the man.

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

I don't quite know what an auteur is.