Chris Rock Quotes

I'm a documentary filmmaker by training. You got to start with the real people and the real place.

I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.

I'm a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you've shot a lot of material.

I'm a filmmaker. I like to ask the questions, make others feel vulnerable. I don't want to be vulnerable.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.

Stories have tangents; they open up and become different things. You can still have a structure, but you should leave room to dream. If you stay true to your ideas, filmmaking becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process. And if it's an honest thing for you, there's a chance that people will feel that, even if it's abstract.

I have no interest in writing, directing or producing.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

As a director, you try to find what is creative.

I enjoy looking at words on paper and visualizing how to make them come to life. As a director, the creative process is really amazing.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.

The thing about documentary is that you don't really choose your subjects: they come and grab you out of your bed.

I think mostly it's the adventure that I will have in making the movie. That's what I look for.

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.

I'm a big fan of documentaries. I've always loved them, and I've just never had the opportunity or the time to make a feature.

It's not a film-maker's job to explain his technique, but to tell his story the best way he can.

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.

I know very few people who have literally improvised a film from start to finish.

I've been directing more and more the last few years, I find it an enjoyable challenge.

I want to direct, I want to be part of something creative, something with quality.

To make personal movies that you are the author of, is quite a difficult thing. It takes a lot of stamina.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.