“You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee.”

— Alfred Hitchcock

Films and Filming (Volume 9, Issue 3; 1963), p. 20 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Films_and_Filming/GMARAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22you+can%27t+direct%22+hitchcock+laughton

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee." by Alfred Hitchcock?

Alfred Hitchcock photo

Alfred Hitchcock 45

British filmmaker 1899–1980

Related quotes

“You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him.”

Dan Patrick (1956) American sportscaster

Catch Phrases

“Dark matter has a gravitation effect on other objects. You can't see it, you can't feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“If you can't be direct, why be?”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Recounting what a college classmate said to her when she was acting "insecure and wimpy", as quoted at Tomlin's official site. http://www.lilytomlin.com/lily/quotes.htm

“After I finished school, I started to get in touch with the referee's work. After all, I grew up in this circle and felt that the referee's job was more interesting, so I slowly decided that the referee's work was my future direction.”

Chen Ruolin (1992) Chinese diver

"从跳台女皇转身裁判席，陈若琳对跳水造星难有了更深的体会" http://m.thepaper.cn/kuaibao_detail.jsp?contid=3109243&from=kuaibao

“All you can do is hope for a pattern to emerge, and sometimes it never does. Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

“You can't eat hope,' the woman said.
You can't eat it, but it sustains you,' the colonel replied.”

Gabriel García Márquez book No One Writes to the Colonel

Source: El coronel no tiene quien le escriba

“It's an issue for me
I went to see this therapist
She said just do the best you can do
Do the best you can do
I was hoping for something more specific”

Todd Snider (1966) American singer

Money, Compliments, Publicity (Song Number 10).
The Excitement Plan (2009)

“I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Saint Paul," interview with John Aldridge, The Guardian (2005-04-10)

“But that's how life is. You never know how it's going to turn out, and you can't plan for everything. You just have to do your best dealing with things as they come and hope people forgive you when you make a mistake.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

“The great disease of mankind is ignorance.
With knowledge you can grasp tight a belief: that you can be better, that the world can be better. With that, you can claim hope.
Hope is the eternal tool in the survival kit for mankind. We hope for a little luck, we hope for a better tomorrow, we hope — although it is an impossible hope — to somehow get out of this world alive.
And if we can't and don't, then it is enough to rejoice in our short time here and to remember how much we loved the view.”

Sidney Poitier (1927) American-born Bahamian actor, film director, author, and diplomat

Source: Life Beyond Measure (2008), twenty-third letter — The World I Leave You, p. 273

Related topics