Somebody else does the rigor and then I listen. I have an assistant, and my manager, and other people who hunt and find and send it to me, and then I just figure out which ones I can do justice to.
You can't have assistant coaches who aren't loyal - but you can learn a lot from your assistant coaches.
My first job was as an assistant in the local library. Self fulfilling prophecy?
So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies.
Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party.
Well, I tried being in front of the camera as a student and that was terrifying. But the press stuff about me growing up on his [film] sets has been exaggerated. I was an extra as a kid and I was also a PA [production assistant] on one of his movies, so I was lucky to get production experience. But I was nowhere near him.
I'd trained to be a diplomat but the state department said I was too liberal. I saw an ad in the New York Times. . . a hack Californian editor came to New York to butcher some films and he needed an assistant. For some reason I read it that day and it changed my life. I went to work for him and he was horrible, butchering these masterpieces by Antonioni, Visconti, but I learned enough to know what he was doing wrong.
The secret is to get a good cinematographer and a very good assistant director. If you get those and stay out of their way, and have good actresses, the script doesn't even have to be that extraordinary.
I'm really a nightmare for the fashion designer because I take away all of his authority, and I become the authority, and I turn him into my assistant. You could say I intervene, and I intervene in a very determining way in all the aspects that have to do with the visual construction of the film.
When he faced me again, he looked ashamed of himself. "I have gravely underestimated you, Darren," he said. "I will not do so again. I made a wiser choice than I realized when I chose you to serve as my assistant. I feel honoured to have you by my side.
I like to disappear in my roles because I don't have an assistant.
I wouldn't go down the route of having an assistant. I don't want to be like that. I want to be normal.
I was an assistant director for a year, and I realized, 'God, this is a lot of hard work. This is going to take time. So what's the shortcut? What's the better option?' Then thankfully, someone said, 'Why don't you become an actor?'
