Garth Davis Quotes

All the movies I've made are essentially character-driven movies about people that I'm interested in.

You read a script, you try and think through what is the best, most wide-ranging way of telling the story: who stylistically, character-logically, psychologically fits inside the world of what you're trying to do. A lot of it, when you're casting, is trying to get yourself in the head of a director.

When I was working on 'Big Fan,' I didn't really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said.

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

Every single film I've done, it's about the character.

Filmmaking is always sort of building a mosaic of this arc of what the character is going through.

“Frank’s” really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in “Room” as well.

The core to what makes Fincher really interesting - all the technique and all that, that is not in the center even if it's a big big part - what is in the center is the characters, and he really is interested in that.

Most of my films have been very character driven.

You can be technically strong, and focus all your efforts on elements like casting, music, cinematography and sets, but they are all just add ons. End of the day, filmmaking is really about how well you tell a story.

I've always believed that the script is the boss.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.

Yet as a director, I don't feel you have to identify with your characters as a requirement to make a movie.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

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

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

I definitely managed to do different kinds of things. My focus is usually who the director is, because at the end of the day the director is the storyteller, what the movie is all about. I don't want to participate in something that I don't think is constructive storytelling.

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.

Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me.

People sometimes ask who I would cast in my books and I never have any idea. I don't think I could ever write a book thinking of it as a movie the whole time. This would be like building a house and filling it with furniture just so you could have blueprints.

Eventually, it came to this place like, 'I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.' 'Man of Tai Chi' became the story to tell.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.

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.