Justin Theroux Quotes

You do a film and you know where you're going, you have this material to stretch and play with as much as possible because you know how it ends.

If I had to choose criteria, for me, it's about first the director. I want to be a part of something that's good and intellectually challenging. After the director it's the character and the story. That's the deal for me.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

It all comes down to what is best for those particular genres, and if you believe in the stories that you're telling and the characters that you like that you want to tell those stories with, you can pretty much apply it to any genre.

In my films writers are more important than actors.

When I do feature films, I usually have a very strong sense of what I want to do. I have topics and subjects, so I go for it. I even know technically what I want to. But in the case of documentary, the story comes to me.

I've always believed that the script is the boss.

You could make a film out of just about anything so long as there is a clear vision about the story.

The way I work is I like to immerse myself in the world of the film and in the character's lives, and then from that, I get a lot of ideas of how the film could be made, how it could be told.

I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.

I don't think of an actor. I think in the character, and then I search for the actor. Usually I'm thinking without names, because they will change my idea. No big egos. If I want egos - just mine. That is enough.

I'm a character-driven director, and I tend to fall in love with the characters in my movies and TV shows.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

I just always look for stuff that has a character-driven thing.

You have total control of it, and when you're an actor, you're subject to production design and costumes and directors and studio choices and producer choices, but when you're writing it, you're creating your own little world in your head, peopled with your little characters. No one is in there monkeying with it, at least not at first - though they will. With this and the other projects I'm working on, it'll have to be given away, and it'll have to be someone else's property.

Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened - but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.

What's so cool about movies is once you're done with the movie, you put it away and come up with a whole new different idea with different characters and a different world. But in TV, you build these characters, and you build this world, and then you're there for however long you do the show.

When I sit down to write, I don't think, 'OK, what is the next David O. Russell film I can write, or what is Harvey Weinstein going to want to buy?' Or even, 'What are filmgoers going to want.' I try to think, tell a good story. Just do what you do.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Film-makers must decide what story to tell and how to tell it.