Francis Ford Coppola Quotes

I think that's the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.

I usually just try to do whatever's on the page because I've done research before - including a lot of analysis - but you end up with conflicting data. To me, the script is king.

Any of the decisions that I made, if one could actually locate a shape or form, were all within a wall, the landscape of music.

Simply making decisions, one after another, can be a form of art.

When I'm making a movie, I never watch the dailies. I see the movie once and that's it. It's really not about that for me. It's not about the externals. When I'm on a set, I don't want to see it. I want to be subjective in it. That's my habit now.

So you know when you were work on Man of Steel, in 10 years somebody is going to do the music for Man of Steel, and a different director is going to be doing Man of Steel. That’s the reality. So all you can do is to give it not only your best, but your vision on what this character is, when you become one with that character.

Each brushstroke is a decision.

I bring myself innately to it, yeah. I bring those details as much as I - what I don't obsess over is, there are certain ways I might've pushed it even a little more. For example, [to Warren] your accent. I know Warner Bros. at one point came in. I don't know, until you came to set, I know I wore that long tartan skirt and the ruffled blouse for that.

If you want to write, then write; if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.

It's so much easier to make a movie about someone who is so likeable that you just want to get out of the way.

Wisdom consists in knowing what not to want as well as what to want.

There is always a better choice that you were unable to quite touch with a single stroke. Even in acting, there comes a point, like a painting, where you have to say, "That's it. I can't go any further with it." And sometimes, you say, "I'm really pleased that that's where it's finished up." Other times, you think, "I don't think I really quite got there, but I haven't got time to go any further." Rather reluctantly, you have to say "That's it."

I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are.

Very often on films, even without a producer credit, I'll be involved, very early on. I want to be there as the thing is taking shape.

When I listen to great music, the first thing I wonder is what people were saying when this came out of the speakers in the studio. I want to know what happened when they played it and said, "This is the one!"

We didn’t want to disrupt the creative process. We have the chance to make the films we want because the films are not expensive. It’s very rare to be able to do that. It’s completely pure.

For me taking a pragmatic decision when it comes to art is almost an oxymoron. The reason I first picked up a pen and wrote a story had nothing pragmatic in it.

I've had to make really big decisions, knowing the results were not always in my control. Through these moments, I've learned to be daring and take risks but understand that everything always happens for a reason.

The real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.

I really enjoyed it - being involved in watching rushes and playback [in "The Invisible Woman"]. Ralph [Fiennes] was very open to my input, I think knowing that he couldn't always be there 100 percent, that he had dual aims with directing and acting.

I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

Since Idi Amin was from the Sudanese section in the north of Uganda, he was darker skinned. He had more of a blue undertone. So, we did change the coloring of my skin to be closer to his. But otherwise, there were no transformations besides acting.

Life is more a matter of choosing than knowing. He could never know the eventual destination of his path, but he could always choose in which direction to take each step.

One of the principals of composition, I would say, in fiction, is you want to do what you can do a lot of. You want to do what you're enthusiastic about and what rings your bell. In this case, almost every decision I made was on that basis.