Director Reputation Quotes

Zhang Yimou is one of the best directors on mainland China.

I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.

I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.

When you start a new project and they say, "Your director is going to be Joe Blo," you're hoping that Joe Blo will be the next Martin Scorsese, but it doesn't always work out that way.

And also, Sergio Leone was considered in Italy a director of category B, not a big director.

I don't go by brand names for directors.

There's good directors and bad directors. Some of the critics are really conscientious and really try to do what they can popularize the work or to explain the work and so on. And then there's the critics who just wants to make a reputation by attacking. Those are the ones I'm not keen on.

I think I have been stereotyped as an action director in Hollywood, so all I got were the action scripts.

I think the dictator director is based upon stories from the past. I don't think anyone would put up with it now. There are a lot of people on a film set with egos. So, to be completely authoritarian, you'd probably have to have a reputation like Kurosowa or somebody to get away with it.

When I decided to work with Krishna Vamsi, people around me were apprehensive about my decision. They warned me that I shouldn't work with an unsuccessful director.

In England, I'm a horror movie director. In Germany, I'm a filmmaker. In the US, I'm a bum.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

I don't say, 'Francis Ford Coppola, what a wonderful Italian-American director.' I judge him based on his film, his craft, his art. That's the way I feel I should be dealt with in this industry.

I love that movie [The Specials]. I love James Gunn. I always sort of suspected that he would do well for himself.

An important Italian critic once gave Fistful of Dollars a very bad review when it came out. Then he went to the university here [Rome] with Once Upon a Time in America. We showed it to 10,000 students. And while the man was speaking that day to the students, with me present, he said, "I have to state one thing. When I gave that review about Sergio's films, I should have taken into account that on Sergio Leone's passport, there should not be written whether the nationality is Italian or anything else. What should be written is: 'Nationality: Cinema.' "

Very often, it's the director that I'm attracted to. If it's a really good director, I don't even have to read the script to say yes.

They call David O. Russell the actor whisperer because he can get stuff out of actors that maybe some other directors can't.

The chasm between independent film and commercial film is now so wide. You either have to be super-famous and get a first-time director or writer's indie script off the ground, or you're a newcomer and go and put a cape on for four years.

There's no such thing as a bad Miyazaki film.

Quentin Tarantino is my 15-year-old son's favorite director, and by that I mean no condescension to either Tarantino or my 15-year-old son.

Richard Marquand, on Jedi, was very much an actor's director.

I've always felt that, although Truffaut was greatly revered and admired, at the same time, in terms of film and how much he loved film, he was underestimated.

David Fincher is one of the best directors I know, so I'm really curious to see it. Really curious, and I want to hear Daniel have the Swedish accent.

Awards are important for all directors because they improve your working conditions. You're only as good as your last film, so if you get prizes or large audiences, then you get more money for your next film.

Regardless of the size of the budget or the name of the director, if the story is really interesting, then I can get on board with it. If it's not, then they're not gonna cast me anyway, because I'll just give a terrible audition.