Hugh Grant Quotes

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

When you're writing, it's all up to you, and you don't have to make any compromises. And when you're directing, there's this intense pleasure you get from working with all these really talented people, and pooling the efforts towards a common goal. I like all the aspects of film-making.

After making 'Secretary,' it was a real shock to me to learn that some directors just aren't interested in what actors have to say. They just don't want to collaborate.

Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.

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

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.

I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

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.

Tim also has enough confidence so that it always looks like a Tim Burton film, but it really is collaborative. You're allowed to do it your way but of course he's always going to choose his way.

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

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.

The filmmakers always have a great level of control.

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.

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

Being a director is almost like being another sort of character, but you're out of view.

Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own - that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that's the bit I like.

You seldom get that in film where you're lucky if you get any say at all in the final cut.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I've never made any film that I wouldn't go back and re-edit.

I'm going to end up making twenty films if people let me.

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

When you create a movie, you create something in your image.