Director's Intuition Quotes

I mean, yeah, Anne Fletcher was a choreographer, but she was born to be a director. You need to have the ability to figure out people's rhythms. It all starts from the script.

As far as pacing the shoot is concerned, I know when I've got it. I don't think there's any reason to take ten takes unless you need them.

[Tony Richardson ] just liked me, knew I was going to be what he wanted [in The Hotel New Hampshire], and that was the end of it. It was unbelievable.

When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I'm a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people's talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot.

But when I direct I become possessed, a possession I've never quite understood.

For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don't feel good about it, I just can't go ahead and make the film.

There are directors who don't cast you for the way you act but for the way you are, the way you behave around the dinner table.

When you're working on a scene, both in the script phase and also in the moment, you look around and you wait for the lightning bolt to strike you and based on your instincts tell you what the right thing to do is here. And that can result in anything from a change of dialogue to the realisation that what you thought was a dramatic scene should actually have some humour. And maybe if you stage it this way it's funnier, or if you put the camera here it tells a different story. That stuff is kind of everything when you're a director.