Mohsen Makhmalbaf Quotes

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.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it's like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen.

When you are acting, you are just one piece of the puzzle. You don't see how everything fits together. It feels like you have less authorship over the entire product. In directing, you take the entire picture into account, so you're challenged in a different way.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

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

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.

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

I appreciate film actors who respect the film making process.

I've liked all the directors I've worked with a lot. And the ones I like best are the ones that have really good taste about what take was best.

There's no way I see myself as a director. Direction is far too creative.

It's really interesting to observe each filmmaker's approach to filmmaking and I feel very fortunate to have worked with a lot of really interesting filmmakers and they all approach their job in unique ways.

I like to be on set and see what the camera guys are up to. I like to see all the jobs that come together to make the thing you are also making.

Filmmaking is the ultimate team sport.

The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra.

My job, as an actor, is to give the director options. You can only hope that the takes that you thought were the best were chosen. But, then again, if I don't watch it, I'll never know.

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job. I really don't think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what this does for me.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It's just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

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 did a lot of theater, so especially as an on-camera camera actor, there are so many things that aren't in your toolbox. They're somebody else's job. You think about editors and rhythm. Volume isn't even in your control.

When you direct a movie, you're basically looking at a story, the way you want to look at it. You bring that director's vision, and I'm totally open for that.

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing.

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.