Todd Haynes Quotes

When you make a movie, you can only make the movie that you would want to see.

No film ever ends up exactly as you would like it to, but with minor exceptions, THX came out pretty much as I had visualized it, thanks to some excellent assistance -- and a whole lot of luck.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

A great movie evolves when everybody has the same vision in their heads.

You become the movie you are making.

Making 'Coraline' was one of the great filmmaking experiences of my life.

Films are not mathematics - that's the first thing you need to understand. At least, that's how I feel. They are not words on paper. Films are made with people, with teams and with individual bundles of creativity coming together to fulfill the vision of an individual who is the director of the film.

I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.

I found it very difficult to explain to someone why you did a film. It's not like having a conversation.

I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.

Film is a very collaborative medium. If you're smart enough, you learn how to maintain your vision while drawing resourcefully from all the people around you.

It's not that there aren't people who care creatively in the world of television, but there's always a bit more time in making a movie. I always feel films are more of a creative journey.

The dream, I think, with any project is it starts with an idea, and then somebody writes it, and the writer hopes that a director comes on and makes this piece of material visual, and both the director and writer hope that they can have actors come in and bring something to it that neither one of them expected, elevating it along the way.

I never control a film. The film controls me.

You do a film and you have hopes for it, and you read it, and you see it one way in your head, and you shoot it, and it'll always change from what you started out. Sometimes it turns out better, sometimes it turns out; I don't know, but as movies go I've never experienced seeing and likening what I've read, and I liked what I read.

Most of the time I've worked with directors who write their own scripts. The story is more important to me than the part. The project of the film has always been more important to me.

The root of any film project for me is this inner need to express something. What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.

You have Cameron Crowe write an incredible monologue for you just based on the things that you're talking about. It just became this opportunity that was too exciting a process to pass up.

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

I write about what I want to write about, and so the film comes out as a very personal expression even if its subject matter is totally prefabricated.

I think directing and writing are very different jobs. Obviously, directing is a more social and managerial job. The other thing about directing is that it's a very, very pragmatic job, and writing isn't.

I always loved doing a movie with Daldry. That's always a huge factor for me.

The nature of the beast is that film is a director's medium. It's not a Tracy Letts play, it's a John Wells film. 'August: Osage County,' as a play, is done. Written. On the shelf. It'll be performed in its entirety for years.

In film, you're painting a canvas. I got really excited about that.

For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.