The Director's Chair
Directors ChairThe Director's Chair is a compilation of interviews from a variety of sources with many of our leading Directors of both the past and present. In these interviews lie "Golden Nuggets" of information from which everyone working in the Motion Picture and Television Industry can learn!

Where applicable, each article offers a link to Shop Amazon where you may obtain additional materials on the subject.
The Director's Chair interviews were provided by Roger DeForest.

There are 50 Videos in this collection
John Carpenter | Director

John Carpenter talks about "Escape from LA"

How does it feel crawling back into the world of Snake Plissken?

quote-leftThe weekend before we started principal photography, I was sitting around my house, brooding. My wife and my son said, "What's wrong with you?" I said, "I'm worried that I don't know the style." The original "Escape from New York" was written in 1974 and wasn't made until 1981. That was a young man's idea, it was a vision of somebody who saw things differently. Now, I'm an old veteran. Am I going to be able to get back in the saddle again?

The Director's Chair
Sat, 05/13/2017 - 11:31
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John Boorman | Director

John Boorman: On "The General"

Watching "The General", I could think of several reasons why Martin Cahill would be a good figure for a John Boorman movie. He's a nonconformist. He sets himself impossible tasks, which you've certainly done in some of the circumstances you've filmed under. But there's a real ambivalence about him as well.

quote-leftLiving in Ireland as I do, and have done for the last 30 years, I was very conscious of him. In fact, we have a curiously intimate personal connection. He robbed my house in 1981. At that time, he was really just a cat burglar -- he wasn't doing any of these big things, but he was very audacious then, and provocative. The police recognized his modus vivendi, but also he always wanted to be known when he pulled off these things. He wanted the credit for them. It was also a challenge, you know: "Well, OK now try and prove it. I did that, now prove it." But amongst the things he took was this gold record I had for the music for "Deliverance". So I put that in the movie; that was my revenge.

The Director's Chair
Mon, 04/24/2017 - 09:25
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Roberto Benigni | Director, Actor

Roberto Benigni Interview

Adrian Wootton Before we talk about Life is Beautiful, I want to go back to your early career and how you became a comedian. You grew up in Tuscany, and am I right in thinking that you started out by working in a circus? Can you tell us about your experience?

Roberto Benigni: Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here! Thank you Adrian. So, how are you?

AW: I'm very well.

RB: I like to be here because this is my first question and answer session in London and my heart is in turmoil. I'm flabbergasted. It's a gift to me, and I have to thank everybody.

The Director's Chair
Sat, 04/22/2017 - 04:29
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Danny Boyle | Director

Danny Boyle - On Trainspotting

The "Trainspotting" machine, which started rolling as a cult novel in Scotland's slums (passed hand-to-hand at outlawed raves) and gathered steam as a controversial West End play, is now in full locomotion, a wildly successful movie in Europe with raging fires of hype being stoked for its arrival on our shores. But will a movie about a bunch of toilet-diving Scottish heroin addicts play in Peoria?

A few months ago, director Danny Boyle didn't think so. "I doubt it'll do any business in America," he said. Was he prepared to alter that prediction now, after a staggering pre-release campaign and stories in every major magazine?

The Director's Chair
Thu, 04/20/2017 - 13:25
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Robert Altman, Director | "Aria" (1987)

Robert Altman on "Kansas City" (and Jazz)

Robert Altman:

Kansas City became the hub of the music world at that time because it was the port for the center of the continent, the crossroad of commerce for one-sixth of America. All the airlines went through there, all the trains. You went from East to West, you went through Kansas City. It was the base for all musicians who traveled in what was called "The Territories", the Western territories. ..
The Director's Chair
Tue, 04/18/2017 - 07:29
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John Cassavetes | Director, Writer, Actor

John Cassavetes - In Quotations

quote-leftI like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat. ..."

The Director's Chair
Mon, 04/10/2017 - 15:34
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Olivier Assayas | Director

Seven Questions for Olivier Assayas

indieWIRE: Does "Irma Vep" belong to an aesthetic tradition?

Olivier Assayas: That's tough to answer because for the first time I've made a film which fit into a genre, which is movies about movies. I knew that I was on ground that had already been covered so that encouraged me to be as radical as I could, to invent my own way of thinking about cinema and not do it like Truffaut when he did "Day For Night". I tried to make something I'm not used to doing, which is comedy, but at the same time I thought this could be a comedy about an ambitious subject-- the creative process. It's like an exercise in film schizophrenia, and in that sense the film tries to move away from looking like anything else.

The Director's Chair
Wed, 03/22/2017 - 04:29
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Director, Woody Allen

Woody Allen: He's No Dustin Hoffman

Woody Allen

"People think my movies are exact copies of my private life, but they're totally made up," insists Woody Allen. Okay, maybe not totally. Speaking from a swank Manhattan hotel, the writer-director-actor who celebrates his sixty-first birthday today admits that his new comedy, Mighty Aphrodite, was inspired by his real-life adopted daughter Dylan. (Mia Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing Dylan in 1992, but the charges were dismissed.)
The Director's Chair
Wed, 02/22/2017 - 05:04
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