David Seltzer Quotes

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.

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.

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

It's great, getting the scripts and working with somebody like Sam Esmail, who is such a great leader.

I've been on a lot of sets, and I've been around a lot of directors, and I've been working for many years now, but stepping in the shoes of being the decision maker and the guy that everybody is relying on at some point, yeah, it was challenging for sure. One thing is that you're responsible for a large group of people.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

When you're directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process.

Collaboration is just, really, a group of people getting in a room with their eye on a very similar prize and wanting to come out with the same show. The director, ultimately, is the guy in front of whom the buck stops. So, he has to have the courage to prevail. But, he has got to have a huge amount of respect for his collaborators.

I'm learning more and more to share creativity with the crew and actors. A film crew is more powerful if you listen to them, but it does make my job more tough because I have to listen.

Every film you work on is different, and that's part of what it's like for anybody who works on a film, is to learn how to work with others. Learn from top to bottom. Actors have to learn how to work with the director and the director has to learn how to work with actors, and that's not just those two departments.

I enjoy directing more when I don't have to direct myself. I like when I can just be the director.

A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.

I have so much respect for directors. It's a tremendous amount of pressure; you have to keep steadfast and keep what you know is right.

Eventually, everyone said, Why don't you direct? It would save time. And that's how it started.

As a director, I get to have a much broader creative expression than as an actress.

Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you're out of view.

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.

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

As a director, you're a bit of a dictator. But I feel that you're a better director if you're open to other people's ideas. It means that it's tougher: you have to be in a choosing process; you have to put the ego aside. As long as everybody's aiming in the same direction... I'm open to my main partners in the film crew.

As a director, you have to understand what is happening - if I don't understand it, you can't make changes.

With film, I have to be a team player; it's a whole different thing. I can't just be a one-man show. I have to learn how to use people to the best of their ability and motivate them to be as passionate about the project as I am.

When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.

You never know when you read a script how it's going to turn out because so much depends on the collaboration between people. If I'd been in some of the movies I turned down, maybe they wouldn't have been a success.

The great thing about movies is that they're collaborative. And the worst thing is that they're collaborative.

I haven't worked with a director who is a crazy person at all.