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.
I'd never really done comedy before Community, so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot.
Although filmmaking is collaborative and involves trust, ultimately it is the director who holds the whole picture together in their head.
It is tough to be a woman. Also as an actor, but more so as a director. And even more today, when distributors and producers are looking at different kinds of films and maybe not necessarily what a woman would want to do.
There are a lot of directors who make big money and do big things and then move out of the 'hood
Every time a director calls me and says, 'If you practice a lot in two months, can you be an American?' And I always tell them, 'Well, maybe but I'm French. So it's going to be hard to be someone else.
So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies.
We're producing a movie now, 'The Onion' Movie, and it's very difficult for me to be on the set. If I'm not right in the trenches, it's very difficult for me to watch another director, because I'm not involved and it's not exciting.
I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.
Remember the great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There's a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo's role through trickery & then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing & blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her & says, "I ran all the way". That's what I want.
I was never a nightclub manager or a hostess. I want to make that very clear. I was an executive at my club. I was a director of VIP operations, that's much different than a manager, that's much different than a waitress, it's different than, you know, a host - I was like an executive-level position
As the director, you have to hold in your head the widest possible vision. Not just the idea and the story, but the conceptual content. But at the same time, you have to consider the tiniest, tiniest detail.
I can rely on me [being a director], unlike some actors. I never got anything less than what I needed from the lead actor.
You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.
I'm not really a guy who wants to be a director, anyway.
You hope and pray that you'll get involved with a director that you understand and who has the same sensibility as you do and knows how to push you and bring out the best in you.
I'm lucky that I've worked with so many different directors with very different styles and with a lot of different actors.
I adapt to directors, I don't like making directors adapt to me. If I'm with Clint Eastwood then I'll do two takes, if I'm with Fincher I'll do 50 - though the thought of that sounds horrible.
I'm the most experienced cinematographer in this medium, so there's no point in having that extra conversation in the middle of the loop. You're making the film in relation to what's happening now, and you can't really affect what's happening now. It's not like you're in control of anything in front of the camera. If you're calling yourself the director and you're not the cinematographer, I think you're kidding yourself.
The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release. Anything I think isn't working or might not work, I don't even put it in the director's cut. And usually it's the studio suggesting I put stuff back in, as opposed to studios saying, "You got to lose 40 minutes," they are always saying, "You've got to gain five minutes. "