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There was a great director who directed a picture that I wrote who barred me from the set—quite appropriately—and said, “I’m sorry, Jim. When you’re directing, you don’t need to know everything. You need the illusion that you do.” And, you know, and I WOULD be there—behind him trying to signal the actors in, you know, in a way I wasn’t even aware of.
--
In the documentary Dreams on Spec

 

James L. Brooks

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When I'm directing a great dramatic scene, part of me is saying, "Thank God I don't have to do that." Because I know how f**king hard it is to act. It's the middle of the night. It's freezing. You gotta do this scene. You gotta get it up to get to that point. And yet, as a director, you've got to get the actors to that point. It's hard either way.

 

Robert DeNiro

 

I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.

 

Kenneth Tynan

 

First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It's an idea you have of yourself, like the idea you have of your own personality which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That's what directing is.

 

Abraham Polonsky

 

When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable or painful experience, you are aware of that experience. These seem to be true and obvious statements. Yet if you look at them very closely, you will find that in a subtle way their very structure contains a fundamental illusion, an illusion which is unavoidable when you use language. Thought and language create an apparent duality and a separate person where there is none.
The truth is you are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, feeling or experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things appear. As you go about your life, can you be aware of yourself as the awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?

 

Eckhart Tolle

 

Kazan is a performer's director, the best director I ever worked with... Most actors don't get any help from directors. Emotional help, if you're playing an emotional part. Kazan is the only one I know who really gives you help.

 

Marlon Brando