Hiro Murai Quotes

I essentially have always directed everything on my TV show without using that title; I edited and wrote all my stuff.

Having total freedom to direct my own movies is more difficult than those I was hired for, where the framework has been already furnished. Unlike with my own work, I don't have to deny or feel embarrassed at the straightforwardness or orthodoxy of the directorial style, because I can say in excuse, "This is how I was asked to direct by those people."

I feel terrible for directors of TV because all the episodes have to look the same. They make a great series for five or six years, and then when it's canceled, they can't break out on their own.

With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.

I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

I have as much artistic freedom in my television work as I have in my films.

I knew 'True Detective' wasn't something I could allow anyone else to develop. But by the time HBO expressed an interest, I still had no real experience.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

My cartoon life is in my office, and it's very separate and getting very in my own head. My television life is I'm begging one of the actors to say the line in the way I'd like them to.

When you're relegated to go from movie to movie, so much of what you're doing is out of your control beyond creating the product.

Ford didn't know what to do with Mister Roberts that wasn't repeating what was successful in New York. He was trying to do things to the play that would be his in the film.

There is often a great disparity between a director's personal style and the movies he makes.

If we had to go live action, I'd hold out for Tim Burton to direct.

TV is a writer's medium.

All these directors, and I would include the Coen brothers and Quentin, have a very unique vision of what they want. They listen to ideas and make people feel like everyone is making the film.

At dramatic rehearsals, the only author that's better than an absent one is a dead one.

Generally in my films like 'Hearts of Darkness' or 'Picture This,' I try not to make myself a presence in the film.

In the TV world, we are seeing a lot more power going to the writer. I sense it is a writer's medium.

Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

Every filmmaker imbues a movie with their own point of view.

The greatest thing that you have when you're a showrunner is this opportunity to create worlds.

I wrote a draft of 'Playboy' for Warner Brothers, and it was impossible to really be independent of Hugh Hefner. In the end, Hugh Hefner was unable to take the back seat required to be able to write something about him that I felt I could do.

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

James Wan is somebody who doesn't have any problem coming in and directing somebody else's script, he'll be the director for hire and he has his own style and he loves that.