Peter Bogdanovich Quotes

I'd just as soon do a big-budget movie as an independent one.

I never choose films because of its starcast - the director and the story are the most important factors for me.

I like to direct movies, but I don't like to goof around for eight years talking about it. And it's pretty irritating to get a movie on. So to complicate it by having more irritation as a director, I don't really need it. And because I direct a great deal still, but in the theater, I kind of get that anyway. Which is not at all to say I would never do it again, or it would never happen again.

We really wanted it to be an action movie. Those are the movies that we love. We're big fans of like Shane Black movies, when we were younger - me and Evan [Goldberg].

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

I want to do wardrobe. I want to do hair. I want to do makeup. I want to do writing. I want to do directing. I want to do all of it. I like it. And I want to do producing.

As an actor, you only get to work 15 minutes an hour; as a director you're fully immersed. It's incredibly more complex and challenging and I love it. I'm sort of a glutton for work and to direct something that I'm acting in feeds the vein.

Most directors prefer to direct everything themselves. I thought I could on Lord Of The Rings, but very quickly found out that the sheer scale prevented it.

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.

If I wasn't a trader, I would probably be in the film business in some capacity and writing in some other form. I went to NYU Film School and London Film School.

When you're a director you always feel weird with another director watching over your shoulder.

I was producing things I was acting in, but I had never directed and I felt it was time. I was looking for a piece of material that was about behavior and feelings. When I read Judith Guest's book, I thought, This is it.

Usually I don't like to act in movies that I direct because it's kind of confusing.

Quoting Demosthenes, 'For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.' I would rather make money playing a piano in a whorehouse than arguing that no cost is incurred when employees are paid in stock options instead of cash. I am not kidding.

Really, the novelist has the best casting since he doesn't have to cope with the actors and all the rest. -Alfred Hitchcock

If I could direct it [films] I would be very happy. But the economics of business don't always allow you to do what you want.

I was into writing and directing. I was a bit of a reluctant actor. I would always ask friends to shoot or direct their movies, but then they'd want me to be in them.

People ask me about that all the time. They say, "Did you ever think of directing?" And I say, "It's completely out of the question."

I would love to be able to get behind the camera and direct actors. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Everything changes once you start trying to market the film. Part of you feels like everything is slipping away from you. For me, I don't want people going to the theater thinking it's going to be a laugh-a-minute comedy, like a Will Ferrell film or something. Because it's not.

When you have people like Casey [Affleck] and Michelle Williams and they want to do more takes you don't say, "Sorry, that's it." And I also don't like to say, "It's fine, it's great." Unless it's clearly there.

If I have things my way, over the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more directing and a lot less acting. That will be fun for a while.

Directing requires great discipline, that ability to be in and out at the same time. The great ones I've worked with are like generals. It's a bit like a small war on that level. The great ones have that combination of freedom and control. I'm nowhere near that. There's still so much to do as an actor. I have enough to explore with that.

The difference between directing film and directing television is so stark simply because TV is a living breathing organism already when you direct an episode.

I really love the experience of moving things around, in terms of being a director.