David Rabe Quotes

Obviously, if a director doesn't communicative a clear, relevant vision of the material, it will not succeed no matter how good the material.

I'll tell you what I love about directing: the surprise. You never know what's going to happen with your piece until an audience weighs in.

Every now and then I have to teach directing. The thing about the theatre is that the most important thing you can do as a director is to make sure that everybody is in the same world - you have to create the world and make sure everyone buys into it.

The vision people have of a director is completely flawed - someone with a crystalline vision of everything they're going to do. How boring would that be? It's a creative and collaborative process.

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 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.

The story [of Allied ] itself is the story I wrote, and that's what's great about Bob [Zemeckis ]. You have meetings, but it's meetings for clarity, not to change what they're saying or doing. He takes what's on the page and executes it so brilliantly.

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student.

It's different being a director. I suppose, especially if it's a story you've written and you feel compelled to tell, in some ways it's a lot easier than acting because you're orchestrating the piece. As an actor, sometimes you're trying to second-guess what people want.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

And my first film was Carnal Knowledge, another amazing experience, largely because of Mike Nichols, who would tell me you can't do anything wrong because you're doing everything right.

As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

I approach directing from an actor's standpoint.

I look at the film as an opportunity to see some bountifully creative minds do something that I could not do - tell the story with images. I can't wait to see what they do.

Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.

I think a director can make a play happen before your eyes so that you are part of it and it is part of you. If you can get it right, there's no mystery. It's not about mystery. It's not even mysterious. It's about our lives.

In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.

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.

Directing is definitely something that is in my life for keeps, and the more I do it, the more I realize how much I want to learn and how much I have to give. And it kind of bolsters my acting - it enhances it in a really wonderful way that I wasn't expecting.

There are a lot of times that if a detail in a scene or a beat, feels unnatural, they'll allow me to explore another direction to go until we're all comfortable with what we are doing.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

A director shouldn't get in the way of the movie, the story should.