Watch: Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, And More Talk The Art Of Filmmaking

The hero of Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night” famously said that “making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west… when you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive. “

Directing a film – no matter if it’s a tentpole feature or a crowd-funded short – is a herculean undertaking. It’s also a commitment that requires no small shortage of overtime hours, thankless work and often soul-deadening compromise. The best directors have found ways to fight righteously for their cinematic visions within the studio systems, so that we may see them as they are: pure, untouched, made for an audience that is ready to devour them. It is that same unyielding, stubborn commitment to seeing one’s vision through, no matter what the cost, that makes going to the movies an indelible and imperative cultural experience. In a new video interview courtesy of the good folks at Film4, a veritable who’s who of today’s best filmmakers share their thoughts on the directorial process, the translation of private thoughts from page to screen and the urgency and chaos that fuels most film sets.

The directors featured in the video truly run the gamut – odds are, one of your favorite directors is in here somewhere. We get brief but telling interviews with guys like Eli Roth and Ben Wheatley: both are genre directors who cheerfully pervert the established conventions of whatever genre they’re in, be it a teens-in-the-woods horror flick (Roth’s “Cabin Fever”) or a psycho-hallucinatory visual freakout (Ben Wheatley’s horrifying “A Field in England”). We also get some splendid words from veteran masters like Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg, along with blockbuster maestro James Cameron. All of these men have been vocal about film’s past and future in recent years, and their thoughts are vital here. Also included in the round of interviews are Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Steve McQueen, the ever-garrulous Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson and more. All these directors, from the tentpole kings (Cameron and Jackson come to mind) to the dogged taskmasters (Fincher, anyone?) to the unexpectedly philosophical (hey, is that Paul Greengrass?) are united by one thing: the impossible challenge of creating cinema. Check out their thoughts on directing in the video below:



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