Barry Sonnenfeld

“I really wanted Michael Jackson to be in the first Men in Black, but he didn't want to be considered as an alien!”

Barbet Schroeder

“Every time, I try to make something different. ”

Barry Levinson

“It gets harder and harder to make movies about human beings. These movies are like an endangered species.”

Baz Luhrmann

“There are successes and failures in what we’re doing, but that’s the road we’re walking down – stealing from culture all over the place to write a code so that very quickly the audience can swing from the lowest possible comedy moment to the highest possible tragedy with a bit of music in the middle.”

Elia Kazan

“I like directors who come on the set and create something that’s a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.”

Henry Hathaway

“To be a good director you’ve got to be a bastard. I’m a bastard and I know it.”

Peter Greenaway

“I want to regard my public as infinitely intelligent, as understanding notions of the suspension of disbelief and as realizing all the time that this is not a slice of life, this is openly a film.”

Tamra Davis

David Lean

“My distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than some other directors.”

David Gordon Green

“People think 'independent' means no interference. Not true. Unless you're paying for everything yourself, you're always subject to who's writing the checks.”

David Fincher

“I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

Delmer Daves

Gregory Nava

“Whenever any question of style or taste in dress comes up, I simply ask myself, 'What would Fred Astaire have done?'”

Costa-Gavras

“My mother used to say ‘stay away from politics’, because my father went to prison. But if you reject politics, you reject a lot of relationships. The worst thing in society is individualism.”

Wes Craven

“The first monster you have to scare the audience with is yourself.”

David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

John G. Avildsen

Buster Keaton

“I don't act anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.”

Atom Egoyan

“I think with all directors there are ideas that recur, at least for the ones that have creative control of their films.”

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”