Leigh Whannell Quotes

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.

I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

I hope to direct at some point, but I don't feel the pressure to rush it. I want to really know what it is that I'm doing.

There's a heresy which is perpetuated by film school that to be a great director you have to write your own stuff.

I like to control my films from beginning to end, to write them the way I want.

As a screenwriter, you are so used to things going in directions that you wouldn't have taken, so to be able to say, 'This is how I intended it, this is how I want to shoot it, and these are the decisions that I'll live by,' I think directing is a logical conclusion of mine.

I'm currently trying to direct my own material.

All the films I do, I write the scripts, I direct.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

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.

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.

I think you should make movies as long as the story dictates.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

A script like 'Nightcrawler' gives me an opportunity to truly realize a vision that's mine, which is exciting.

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

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.

I'd grab the camera and tell people what to do, and when I was 14, someone told me that it was called directing.

Being behind the camera is where I feel comfortable. I've found something that I feel I, as 'Michael,' can be as confident in as 'Johnny' was on the stage. It's great being part of the creative process. You're right at the start of an idea, and you get to see it all the way through till the end.

That's the only way I can control my movie. If you shoot everything, then everything is liable to end up in the movie. If you have a vision, you don't have to cover every scene.

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

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.