Scott Derrickson Quotes

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

When you're writing, in theory, everybody is serving you. When you're directing, you're serving everybody - in the guise of acting like everybody's serving you. But you're really serving the materials. You're serving the actors. You're in charge, but it's not free.

As a writer, it's very difficult to just hand your script over to someone else, especially if you have to watch them hurt it, and that's when I decided I would direct my own work.

I've directed things that other people have written before, and I've written things and given them to other directors. So I'm very versatile in terms of that, and I enjoy all of it.

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.

I would never want my name on something that I did not write most of. Part of television is you get rewritten.

You're thinking about the physical consequences about what you're writing if you're going to direct it. If you're not going to direct it, then it's somebody else's problem, and they'll solve it.

I essentially have always directed everything on my TV show without using that title; I edited and wrote all my stuff.

As an actor you can always blame the director or writer for negative feedback. But as a writer, you're the reason why everyone's in the room.

There's a funny thing that, in film now, everybody thinks that the director does everything, and in TV, everybody thinks that the writer does everything, and I'm quite comfortable with that as a director. I don't mind that.

Filmmaking was the way I could write characters and not have to give them up to anybody.

I think everything that I've done, I've been involved with for longer. Either you develop it from scratch, or you take something, and you develop it, and you work on the script, but I'm not sure how good I'd be at just sort of taking a piece of material and being a director for hire like that.

Writer-directors are a little bit more liberal, rather than having just the writer on the set, because I think sometimes the writer becomes too precious with the words. If you're a writer-director, you can see what you're doing and see your work in action, so I think you can correct it right there and still not compromise yourself.

I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.

I thought one way to try to hold on to the power was to write the script myself. That way, I could say to filmmakers, "I'm not asking you to hire me unseen. I'm just saying, 'Here's my script. Can we work together?'" So that worked out well.

I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

I feel very creatively satisfied and lucky that I get to write for other people, but for something I direct, it has to be something I completely understand every facet of.

Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen. So if you have a valuable idea, the only way to protect it is to direct it.

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

As an actor, most of the time, you only have so much say in how, what and where things go. As a director, you really get to paint a bigger picture. You have many more brushes to use.

Maybe I'll just write books. I'd like to make another movie, but I don't want to go back and [do] what they want you to do, to make it for a million dollars. I did that. I don't need a lot, but I need what I used to get, and they don't give you that anymore.

The timing for directing is usually because it takes that long to develop a piece and then do pre-production and then post-production. It takes at least a couple of years. I prefer directing to doing other things. Directing and writing seem to be infinitely more creative

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is.

I didn't direct [the Taboo episodes]. I wrote all of them.

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.