Haskell Wexler Quotes

I'd like to direct myself but I'm a cinephile and I also would like to just step behind the camera and be on the other end of making movies.

I would recommend that any writer get off their ass at least once and just try it. Directing is a completely different set of muscles. It also affects your writing because, once you start directing, you tend to write your scripts with directing in mind.

I would like to write a movie and, if it wasn't too crazy, also direct.

I've always been a relaxed person on set, but I think the main thing is I think about it from an editing point of view way more than I did before.

Alejandro Amenábar is a very interesting filmmaker. I had really liked The Others, which was a movie he made with Nicole Kidman a few years ago. He made a very compelling case about how much he wanted me to be in this movie. Whenever a really passionate, talented filmmaker seems to have an interest in me, I take it very seriously because I like to work.

I love directing because you get to see your film come to life. You get to work with the actors. There's something magical about each piece of it.

Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.

My M.F.A was in directing, and all the films I've made, for film school and after, I've written, directed and shot.

Zhang Yimou is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

I may even show up behind the camera. I love to put things together; I love to give direction. I have a great eye for pace.

You talk about what a director, he was smart. He said, Turn the camera on!

I did this movie with Spike Lee called 'Sucker Free City,' and that would have to be my favorite role by far. It was just so much fun to work with Spike and shoot in San Francisco.

I like to direct for the big screen.

I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.

I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a sequence or a scene how you want it to look anyway.

That's the joy of making a movie: watching all the elements come together.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense - I want the director to see what I'm trying to do.

From 2005 to 2010, I was exclusively shooting 'The Act of Killing' and then editing it.

I am interested in people. I'm interested in telling stories, whether that is behind the camera or in front of the camera.

I'm not the best filmmaker, but on the sets, it seems like everybody is having fun.

I've always been passionate about directing.

Once you turn on the camera, making a movie is making a movie. I don't care if it's $9 million dollars or $50 million dollars. You have bigger toys, bigger set, actors who are better paid, but once you turn on the camera, it's director and performance, and I don't find a big difference.

My whole approach is very much about using the locations as a world, trying to find the beauty in the time of day we shoot or the ugliness of it, in cases.

I love film very much. It's very special to me, and seeing how it all turns out is always just a magical moment for me.

I think for me, what I'm doing on set is I'm watching things happen as an audience member and trying to just look at, what's the image we're photographing, how will that advance the story and what will the next image be.