Sidney Lumet Quotes

All good work requires self-revelation.

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

I don't know how to choose work that illuminates what my life is about. I don't know what my life is about and don't examine it. My life will define itself as I live it. The movies will define themselves as I make them. As long as the theme is something I care about at the moment, it's enough for me to start work. Maybe work itself is what my life is about.

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.

But he meant beauty in the sense of its organic connection to the material. And this is the connection that, for me, separates true stylists from decorators. The decorators are easy to recognize. That's why critics love them so.

The word ‘actress' or ‘authoress' always struck me as condescending. A doctor's a doctor, right? So I've always referred to ‘actors' and ‘writers,' regardless of their sex.

The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn't.

don’t know what my life is about and don’t examine it. My life will define itself as I live it. The movies will define themselves as I make them.

The basic 110-volt AC power line moves the electrons at 60 cycles. If a transformer is close to the power source (and all speakers have transformers), the 60 cycles produce an audible hum. Crackling, caused by dirt on the sound head, can also be heard.

For any director with a little lucidity, masterpieces are films that come to you by accident.

Books are made out of books.” — Cormac McCarthy Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From David Byrne, How Music Works Mike Monteiro, Design Is a Job Kio Stark, Don’t Go Back to School Ian Svenonius, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ‘n’ Roll Group Sidney Lumet, Making Movies P.T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting

Dolby was in the driver’s seat. “Surround Sound” was added. Now we had three speakers behind the screen, two more on the left side of the theater, and two on the right. A closely guarded secret about all this is that you hear the correct balance only if you’re sitting in the center of the theater. On the left or right side, those speakers tend to dominate.

My job is to care about and be responsible for every frame of every movie I make. I know that all over the world there are young people borrowing from relatives and saving their allowances to buy their first cameras and put together their first student movies, some of them dreaming of becoming famous and making a fortune. But a few are dreaming of finding out what matters to them, of saying to themselves and to anyone who will listen, “I care.” A few of them want to make good movies.

Like all boses—and on set, I'm the boss—I'm the boss only up to a point.

the Sidney Lumet film Power, a dark examination

When I began making movies, the only crew jobs available to women were as script girls and in the editing department. As a result, I still think of movie crews as male. And in fact, they still predominantly are.

Life has a cruel way of balancing pleasure with pain. To make up for the joy of seeing Sophia Loren every morning, God punishes the director with the mix.

1957 classic movie 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet.

Yeah. You ever see that Sidney Lumet movie The Verdict?” “I don’t think so. I don’t go to a lot of movies anymore.” “It’s an old one with Paul Newman. I went through a Paul Newman phase. Anyway, he’s a lawyer—a drunk, actually—and he tries to drum up business by going to funerals and passing out business cards.

Sometimes, on particularly good takes, I’m so moved that I stop “doing” the scene and just watch in awe at the miracle of good acting. As I said earlier, that’s life up there. When it flows like that, that’s when I say “Print.

Just talk and listen.” My own teacher Jean Shelton used to say this to us until we were tired of hearing it. Sidney Lumet uses this expression as well. Talk to a person. Listen to a person. Be a person, not a character. Listening is the most important element of performance. It is the most important thing a director should be looking for. Some of the things I say in this book are controversial, but this is not. Every good director and every good actor agree on this point. Even if they don’t always do it, they know they should.