Andrew Dominik Quotes

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

I love David Fincher - even though it was just two scenes, I loved the way we worked and could tell by the way he was shooting it that this was going to be an affective movie to say the least.

I think I read films having grown up around the pre-production and post-production aspect of the filmmaking medium, a lot more than most young people who are in acting would have experienced. I do think about scripts in a different way. I can't just read a script as an actor. I don't know how to do that.

The director is the only person on the set who has seen the film. Your job as a director is to show up every day and know where everything will fit into the film.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

I guess, as a director, you sort of take the script, and you find ways to interpret it.

I am eternally impressed and amazed by what directors do.

Jason Reitman is an amazing director; he's really amazing with his actors and crew.

Making a movie is casting a spell.

For me, it's always filmmaker and then character and then story. They're all equally important but if you don't have a great filmmaker, you will not have a great film unless you just get lucky.

It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.

Spielberg gave us three takes before saying anything to us. Since then, I do that, three takes, to let the actors find their rhythm.

Directing is a tremendous art.

It's kind of dangerous to cut in the camera, but that's the only way I know how to direct.

I usually don't say anything to the actors. It works better for me because when they come to the set, they are at the same time scared and excited because they are not well aware of what will happen.

Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.

Some directors don't get involved in the cinematography and are just about story, but I'm definitely more tactile than that in terms of my involvement in the minutiae.

I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.

My M.F.A was in directing, and all the films I've made, for film school and after, I've written, directed and shot.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.