Tom Skerritt Quotes

Being able to communicate what your vision is clearly and with specificity is the most important thing a director can do.

I had a philosophy, which may have been proven right, that directing isn't as hard as everyone says it is.

I love being creative. I love acting, but I also love directing because you get to have a vision for the whole and bring that vision to fruition.

Certainly there is a lot of collaboration, but there is also a lot of clarity that has to be had in the vision that you have for the film when you come in as the director. Without that, there's no bullseye to be aiming for.

As a director, if you know what you want, then it's not scary.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing.

So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

Directing is the best job going. I don't understand why everybody doesn't want to direct. It's an absolutely fascinating combination of skills required and puzzles set on every level - emotional and practical and technical. It calls up on such a wide variety of skills. I find it completely absorbing. I just love the whole process.

You can be intuitive when you've got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It's the most personal process ever. It's the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.

The biggest thing is to overcommunicate your vision. It's so important to have real clarity as to what is inside your head, and sometimes that's really terrifying for people.

Directing is extrovert and gregarious; writing is isolating, introverted, and lonely.

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.

The nature of filmmaking is that there are so many people involved in it, so many fingers in the pie, that part of the talent of a director is to try and get your personality through in the movie.

The challenge is to balance the technical elements and what is required of us with being artists and telling a story.

As a screenwriter, you always have frustrations. It's just the nature of the job, and you have to live with it. Your vision is not going to be the same as the director's vision. It doesn't mean one is better or worse; it means they're different.

You have to have the essential pleasure of making a movie. It's such a huge factor and adventure for a director because you really are the leader and the captain.

It's so difficult to actually come up with ideas that you really fall in love with, you know? That's the most difficult thing about filmmaking - and that's my main challenge in life.

I'm not the guy who does slo-mo, or I'm not the guy who does splashing rain or doves flying or anything; that's not me. Every film, I try and make it the way I see it in my head, and it really just depends on the script and the people I'm working with or whatever interests me at that particular time.

Ultimately what I try to do is work on stories I love with people I admire, and sometimes they get made and sometimes they don't.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.

I think the best directors aren't afraid to ask questions.