McG Quotes

I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game.

Working on a green screen set, yeah, it's almost like reading from a novel, taking those black words and creating a world around you.

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.

I never write with an actor in mind - never.

Chemistry exists or it doesn't, and I think casting is a very underappreciated component of filmmaking.

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.

Directing films is easier said than done. The job needs a lot of sensibility to put many things in place.

Many times, what's in the script doesn't make it to the film these days, and when you choose a job, you take it based on genre and whom you're going to work with, if you believe in them.

I love to choose the right actors. It's kind of a pleasure to work with them and watch them imbue your concepts that you write.

You could make a film out of just about anything so long as there is a clear vision about the story.

There is so much that I love about all aspects of making a film or a TV show.

I don't really write with actors in mind; I write with characters and then hope desperately that we can get good actors to play those parts.

Any script, even like The Founder, if it's something that I imagine myself playing this character or that character - any of the characters, basically - how do we flesh these characters out to be good enough to have amazing actors that come in that make it really difficult for them to say no? Even though I'm not right for any of those parts, that's just kind of how we go about it.

I usually try not to think about actors while writing, because the odds of those stars aligning and you getting those specific people are so rare.

Sometimes the nature of a big movie, the nature of the material, the scene doesn't have the richness that you'd want it to.

If you're directing, it doesn't really matter any more if it's going straight to TV - what matters is whether you have the resources to make a story that moves you.

When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he's going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there's one guy: the director. It's different in television.

The difference between film and TV is the pace. You don't have the leisure of time in television.

I'd love to direct, I'd love to produce. I'd love to learn all about it, and being around it all the time certainly helps.

The least consideration of any film I've ever worked on is who is right for it.

Movies are in a much longer production conversation before an actor is even involved. I always thought of actors as the last piece of the puzzle - so you're a tool.

Filming is like a house, you have to feel comfortable in it.

Actually, no, but I am close to the people who are working on Chicken Little, and I'm very close to the people over at Pixar. I mean, as far as stories are concerned, almost everything we have could be told that way.

Making 'Coraline' was one of the great filmmaking experiences of my life.

When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life.