Tommy Lee Jones Quotes

I was constantly reading books about how to direct, and asking directors, 'How do you do it?' And when I finally actually started doing the work, it seemed like you have to be decisive and have an opinion. But also you have to be a good collaborator and hire the right people to shore up whatever your skill set is.

I like working with different directors; it keeps you on your toes.

All the filmmakers I've worked with have taken my desire to educate myself very seriously.

I love working with young people and young filmmakers, and I love working on first films. I think it's cool. It's fun. I just take it as it comes.

I tried working with the best of directors and producers. I tried being selective, but things didn't work out. Now, I am open to working with anybody and everybody who is good. Or I'll try to make it good. That suits me.

I think everything you do, whether it's low budget things when you're first starting out or full feature films or when you're working with Hollywood, you're always learning, all the time.

I think it's an important part of the visual effects supervisor's job to get really deeply embedded in production and keep us all focused on trying to generate the best result. I'm not proprietary about, 'I would rather do this effect than let physical effects do it.' No, let's do the smartest thing for the movie.

I am not trained to be a director or an actor. I have learnt everything by watching other people work and studying their work.

I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility.

It was easy and fun [filming in Hail, Caesar!], and I think it's easy to be intimidated by the Coen brothers, because they're quiet. They don't heap praise, especially upon themselves. It's not like they're walking around thinking they're the greatest thing on Earth.

With each job that you're given an opportunity to do, you're asked to use new parts of yourself and to figure the play out with other tools that you perhaps didn't use with the last show.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'

Some people are brilliant on the first take, some people are brilliant on the fourth take, and when you are doing a group scene, you kind of have to figure that out.

When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.

Going forward, I have four different ways of approaching what I want to do - I can generate my own material by writing. I can produce, direct, act, or do a combination of these things, mixing it up.

I just know that making 'Beast' was an amazing experience. It was my first feature, it was the director's first feature, and every day, you're just trying to do good work and learn.

On the driving side, I think I grew in the Nationwide Series to a point, but then coming over to the Cup side, I kind of had to grow in different ways as far as the work ethic that I had to put back into talking to my engineers a lot more and talking to my crew chief a lot more.

I always look at 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' They talked about how they wrote this movie with horses, and then they realized that horses are super-expensive and time-consuming. 'Why don't we just change it to coconuts?' That's part of my process.

I love working with Prada, I would do it all the time if I could. Working with them is like working on a film: it is very collaborative.

Working with directors like Gurinder Chadha was a learning experience for me.

As I get more confident as a filmmaker, I don't need to prepare so much in advance. I can trust that I and my team can come up with a solution.

I prefer directing to producing as it is far more satisfying.

When I began to direct, I discovered that I was much more comfortable than I was acting.

I am open to working with new directors as long as the script excites me.

I'll always work with my collaborator in the room so I have a reaction on a note-by-note basis. I know in my gut when something works for me, and I'll fight for it, but I'm a very easy re-writer.