Sam Mendes’ 25 secrets that make you a happier director

Sam Mendes, the British director who brought us American Beauty, Skyfall, and Spectre says that tributes are wonderful, but they are backward looking, and shares what he’s learned along the way. “If there are any directors out there, or anyone who’s interested in directing, These 25 steps towards becoming a happier director.

1. Always choose good collaborators. It seems so obvious, but the best collaborators are the ones who disagree with you. It means they’re passionate, they have opinions, and they’ll only ever say yes if they mean it.

2. Try to learn how to make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. Direct Shakespeare like it’s a new play, and treat every new play as if it’s Shakespeare.

4. Learn to say, “I don’t know the answer.” It could be the beginning of a very good day’s rehearsal.

7. If you are doing a play or a film, you have to have a secret way in if you are directing it. Sometimes it’s big things. American Beauty, for me, was about my adolescence. Road to Perdition was about my childhood. Skyfall was about middle-age and mortality. Sometimes it’s small things. Maybe it’s just a simple idea. What if we do the whole thing in the nightclub, for example. But it’s not enough just to admire a script, you have to have a way in that is yours, and yours alone.

12. You are never too old to learn something new, as I was reminded when I learned to ski with my 10-year-old son. He, of course, did it in about 10 minutes, and I spent four days slaloming up and down, looking like a complete tit. But, don’t be scared of feeling like a complete tit. It’s an essential part of the learning process.

13. There is no right and wrong, there is only interesting, and less interesting.

14. Paintings, novels, poetry, music are all superior art forms. But theater and film can steal from all of them.

16. Peter Brook said, “The journey is the destination.” Do not think of product, or, god forbid, audience response. Think only of discovery and process. One of my favorite quotes from Hamlet—Polonius: “By indirections find the directions out.”

17. Learn when to shut up. I’m still working on this one.

18. When you have a cast of 20, this means you have 20 other imaginations in the room with you. Use them.

22. Learn to accept the blame for everything. If the script was poor, you didn’t work hard enough with the writer. If the actors failed, you failed them. If the sets, the lighting, the poster, the costumes are wrong, you gave them the thumbs-up. So build up your shoulders, they need to be broad.

25. Never, ever, ever forget how lucky you are to do something that you love.

The full article is available on Vanity Fair