Director Quotes

I never saw myself as a director. It’s certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

Nowadays, there are seven music directors in one film. I had never heard of such a thing before. If one of our old music directors was told to share a score with others, he would have left the assignment.

I love doing film soundtracks and working with directors on how they want the scene to be portrayed on audio as opposed to visual.

Somebody said that I’m a bit like a sponge, grabbing things here and there, soaking stuff up. [As a director] you have to be, really.

I don’t read reviews, but I do get feedback from my peers and people I know, like other actors and directors and producers.

When I was a young stunt guy the director would say: “You’re useless” But I wanted to be the best, I wanted to be a super stunt guy. That’s how I built myself, because of martial arts and everything.

I don’t like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.

And I don’t think Director Comey ever adequately explained why he treated the Clinton investigation one way and the Trump investigation another.

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

You realize as a director that when you are cutting a film, you want to have alternatives. You need color and choices. You don’t want four takes that are identical.