Richard Linklater Quotes

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

Every time you start a movie is to explore with a director and if you can with the actors and with the other collaborators and try to figure out what's the best way to tell the specific story.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

As an actor you have to bring to the table your creative input. But when a director like Ridley Scott says I want you to do this this way, you know when he gets to the editing room he has a reason for it. It's like watching a masterpiece.

A film is a director's vision... there is, however, much input an actor or actress can have.

As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

Director of any film is very important, and an actor has to leave himself in his hands to mould.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.

I started out my career as a screenwriter and quickly discovered that adhering to a script isn't always the best way to make a film. You have to take into consideration the nuances of the characters and what the actors bring to their roles.

If you're a director and someone shows up and asks how I do it, I'd imagine, as a director, you're like, 'Man, I've got a million decisions to make; can you show up with an idea for the scene?'

As a director, you want to work with great writers.

I guess, as a director, you sort of take the script, and you find ways to interpret it.

I definitely have to know every detail of a script and analyse its potential before I think further because if the director is the captain, then the script is the ship.

We worked on The Perfect Storm, and I'll never forget, Wolfgang Petersen would talk about a moment. Like a non-speaking moment, where we'd all be sitting around eating dinner, and it would probably last maybe four seconds on screen. But he would sit there and talk about it for about 10 minutes. He knew what piece of the puzzle that scene would be, and if it were six seconds, it would be too long. If it were three seconds, it wouldn't be enough. I'm always turned on with people's enthusiasm like that.

Well, there's two things I have criteria for doing a film: The script, which is the story, and the filmmaker, and it's a filmmaker's medium. I like really strong directors, and so when I do a film, I'm out there to serve the director, really, which is in turn to serve the script, to serve the director cause he's the one making the film. I relied on Todd Haynes for that.

As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas.

I was amazed by how much you have to think about as a director. As an actor, you don't have to think about much at all, as it turns out. It's very easy. And then when you step into the director's role, there's this whole universe of stuff that you have to pay attention to that's amazing to me.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

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 allowed the scriptwriter to come to my parties for research and it's a good thing he did otherwise I don't think Personal Services would've been so good.

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.

When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.