NYTimes: Wow, I Was a Director, and I Wanted to Say, Whoa! "Suddenly everyone seemed to be pulling together in the common goal of making a movie, and they were looking to me to help them do it. In fact, as far as I could tell, the moment you remove the screenwriter, things actually begin to happen.

The screenwriter is like an economist or political commentator... You are an adviser, not a builder.

For the director, it is the exact opposite. The time for theorizing is over. It is yes or no, and pretty soon you have an aesthetic. Period. A very experienced director told me, "A movie is 10,000 decisions, and 5 percent either way can completely change the outcome." For the mathematically inclined, it breaks down like this: 10,000 decisions over a 50-day shoot is 200 decisions a day. Let's say you're an absolute genius and you have the correct answer for 95 percent of the questions you will be asked. That still leaves the crucial 5 percent, the 10 decisions each day for which you will not have the answer. On those 10 questions, you'll trust your instincts and wing it. And if you're Fran?is Truffaut or Orson Welles, you'll get them all right and make a masterpiece, like "The 400 Blows" or "Citizen Kane."

And that seems to be the trick of directing: I tried to bring the picture back to the truth of that emotional tone that I had felt so deeply during the writing of the script. The lighting, camera movement, blocking of the actors, performance, pacing, sound design, score, songs: every conceivable detail, and every question, was held up and measured against that imaginary place, then kept or discarded so that the entire world of the film is hermetically sealed, complete unto itself in every respect." That's why I still write, yet to direct my own film--waiting for the chance. And it will be allllllllright.