The principle job of a director is to first get his script and get it right and get it playable and get it almost foolproof. Then his job is to cast it as perfectly as he can. If he does those two things, he can phone in the direction, because it doesn’t make any difference, his work is eighty percent done. The fact is that no director with a poor script that is badly cast can make it work through his direction. On the other hand, if he gets the script right and the actors right, then he can invent, then the rest of it is fun—I don’t mean it’s all fun, it’s partly a pain in the ass, but I
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