I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.

Most TV shows are writing the next episode while you're directing the one you're doing, and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do, and they're putting it all together.

We must have a welfare system that we can afford, which will mean giving greater attention to directing the welfare program toward its primary purposes and its intended beneficiaries.

Whatever I do - whether it's directing, producing - I just come at things from characters, from stories, from jokes and scene rhythms. I'll always have that at the epicenter, I think.

My first pilot gig, in fact my first job in television, was 'Freaks and Geeks,' and the experience of directing that pilot was probably the single most formative of my directing life.

Part of the process of acting in a film that you're also directing is really trusting the people around you to capture your vision, which hopefully you have communicated well to them.

I think I was never home when I was directing, because you're either prepping, shooting, or editing, and then acting at the same time. It's really time-consuming, but it was great fun.

To attempt this would be like seeing without eyes or directing the gaze of knowledge behind one's own eye. Modern science can acknowledge no other than this epistemological stand-point.

If I'm acting at all, it's going to be under Marvel contract, or I'm going to be directing. I can't see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I'm contractually obligated to do.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

That's what's nice about directing a film and having it done: There's nothing more I can do about it. It's done. That's it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.

I was very insecure approaching the idea of directing a feature film. I told myself I would not move until I felt I was moving in power rather than moving in desperation to make a movie.

When I'm directing actors, I often find myself slipping in sports metaphors, like: 'Don't go for the punch line here, just put it up on a T-ball stand so she can hit it out of the park.'

Storytelling is storytelling. You still play by the same narrative rules. The technology is completely different. I don't use one piece of technology that I used when I started directing.

My dad had a big influence on me, and although I was never very bright at school, I used to love philosophising with him about big universal things - and I think that's what directing is.

Photography is a hobby born out of my time in undergrad at USC. It is more of a pleasurable hobby, a stress reliever. I don't consider it a professional endeavor like acting or directing.

At USC, when I studied film scoring my first year, one of my first friends that I met was Ryan Coogler. He was in the directing program at USC. He became one of my best friends at school.

I was never interested in becoming an actor. I was directing videos. I was never into acting. I was into shooting music videos. I've only ever been behind the camera. Never in front of it.

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

I committed to directing 'Catch Me If You Can' not because of the divorce component, but principally because Frank Abagnale did things that were the most astonishing scams I had ever heard.

There are times when I am directing, and there are a couple of moments I didn't get the way I wanted, but I know I still have other angles to shoot and I have to be done by noon; I move on.

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

I have a bunch of concepts and ideas that I want to do but I have also been growing my production company in general and looking to branch out of projects that I am directing and producing.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie.

I know it's good when I see a smaller film get recognized because it means more publicity for them. When you start producing and directing the movies become a little more like your children.

I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.

I stopped directing in 2001 for four or five years, until I did the TV series 'Masters Of Horror.' I had been working steadily as a director since 1970. That's a long time. I was burned out.

My two favorite parts of what I do are definitely writing the music and then writing and directing the videos to support each song. As well as doing my own makeup and styling for the videos.

I did software development for a while, and I also spent several years directing a nonprofit in San Francisco that did computer education for the poor. I also did a lot of work in fast food.

I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did 'Reno 911!' for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the 'Star Trek' thing.

Definitely directing is the thing I like the most because this is where everything you know can be used. It's the most personal process ever. It's the most demanding one, but again, rewarding.

I find directing so incredibly rewarding and challenging and humbling and exciting and engaging. Scenes become challenging. Actors bring out the best of you. Circumstances demand you dig deep.

For me, all you want from your actor is for them to engage on a deeply emotional level with the material. If you feel like that happens, directing the actors is pretty much done at that point.

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera.

I'm trying my hand at directing. I'm doing an independent movie that we haven't started casting yet, but it's like an edgy version of 'Lethal Weapon' and '48 Hours,' only with two women in it.

I did a lot of small black-box theater in New York when I was starting out. I'd get a group of actors together to do workshops and readings. And I ended up directing three or four productions.

I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.

I like building and making things. I, perhaps, would like to try my hand at directing one day. Sometimes I fancy myself as an architect - but I think I might need to go back to school for that.

I think in the old days, films really went for the shock, with the blood and guts, but movies are getting better. The writing and directing have improved a lot, because the audience demands it.

I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

My interpretation of a strong director is someone who knows their story. That's what directors are, they're storytellers because they're directing where your focus is going to be as an audience.

People don't appreciate the extent to which we've set in motion a substantial and long-overdue change to U.S. immigration policy, simply by directing the DHS to use existing laws and authorities.

I love directing; it felt right to me when I did 'Flying Lessons'. It's something I will do again. Really, you can always be working and developing. That's something that's kind of ever constant.

Becoming a writer, and then a director, was taking my creative life in my own hands, and wanting to have stories that I wanted to put out into the world - and I have fallen in love with directing.

I had a feeling about directing Cocoon II: The Return. At first I wasn't too interested because it was a sequel. Then I read the script and was excited by the relationships and its mystic quality.

I was joking with my mom that all Jewish mothers now will want their kids to be filmmakers instead of doctors. Because you can make one film, and suddenly you're directing a 'Jurassic Park' movie.

Fundamentally, what you're trying to do when you're directing is get a group of people who most likely have never met, unify them, and make sure that we're all clear on what we're marching towards.

Really, anyone in the business who transitions into directing as a writer or editor or an actor or a cinematographer, at some point you have to kind of take a leap and say, 'I'm committed to this.'

I worked as a production assistant on a couple of films, and finally, I got a job at an animation studio as an editor. After that, work begat work. I got into directing music videos and commercials.

The AT&T commercials are the most fun acting opportunity that anyone could ask for. That being said, directing exercises a part of my brain that is really fun that I don't get to try out as an actor.

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