Peter Landesman Quotes

Writer/directors are, for me, the most inspiring people to work for because they are the person on set that knows the answer to all the questions. They have the most invested in the project because they've been with it from conception.

As an actor you can always blame the director or writer for negative feedback. But as a writer, you're the reason why everyone's in the room.

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.

It's only when you're privy to the conversations and a member of the production team that you can direct the course of a series and make sure it flourishes.

I guess when you're holding the creative reins, you can be across everything, and it's more authentic. You can control it.

Being on set is difficult for the writer. Your job is done, and you have to step back and hand it over to the director.

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

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.

For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

To be a good director, you have to spend a lot of time on actual sets, but today, there's a lot of people who spend a lot of time in dark rooms writing a script, and they'll go in and tell the story to some suit at a studio who says, 'Okay, this is great, let's go.' But that doesn't necessarily mean you know what to do once you're on set.

To me, the director is the most important, rather than the story.

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

I've never worked for a show or was on a show where I didn't have a lot of control creatively, but then again, I haven't worked on a lot of shows.

Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.

I want to direct but I think I'd be bloody awful and I don't want to produce but I think I'd be a very good producer because if I believed in something I'd be able to protect it.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

A successful film begins by choosing a director whose creative vision will define the choices made by everyone involved in the film.

I think, when you're a director, you get sucked into your project whether you like it or not, right?

Films are a director's medium. We're all stemming from the director.

Essentially, it is the director who is the creative head of a film. The final authority on all decisions lies with the director. That is how it should be. And then other team members can give their creative inputs.

I have to say that whatever decisions I make, I really do think that movie making is a director's medium. They are the people that ultimately shape the film, and a director can take great material and turn it into garbage if they are not capable of making a good movie.

I think everything that I've done, I've been involved with for longer. Either you develop it from scratch, or you take something, and you develop it, and you work on the script, but I'm not sure how good I'd be at just sort of taking a piece of material and being a director for hire like that.

I learned that you really don't have any control as a writer. Waah, waah, waah. Big deal. Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control. As someone who's just writing scripts, you just kind of have to shrug. I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general. It is what it is.