I'm here to make good pictures. If I don't see it, I won't touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!
William WylerRead
A director must push his actors to the utmost limit to get everything possible out of each scene - without being corny or sentimental or going overboard.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A director's role is to challenge their actors to perform at their best while maintaining authenticity.
In this quote, William Wyler emphasizes the delicate balance that directors must strike when guiding their actors. He suggests that a director's responsibility is to stretch the actors' abilities and evoke their full potential in every scene, yet do so in a way that remains genuine and avoids melodrama. The key is to maintain a level of artistic integrity and avoid cringeworthy moments, ensuring that the emotions conveyed are both impactful and believable.
Themes
DirectionActingPerformanceArtAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
During a film workshop, a teacher could quote this to motivate students to push their creative boundaries.
More from William Wyler
All quotes βThe slightest thing can ruin a scene, but you must be willing to take chances.
William WylerRead
Everything a director does must help the story and the performances. Otherwise, it is useless.
William WylerRead
Similar quotes
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
James ThurberRead
People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.
Andy SerkisRead
Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems
Walt WhitmanRead
It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.
Joseph BrodskyRead
Talents of the novelist: ... observation of character, analysis of emotion, people's feelings, personal relations.
Virginia WoolfRead
Art is long, life is short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead