When I was 15, my brother had a saying about me, “Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, never in doubt.”

I’m not sure it was a compliment…

There I am at 15...Not a doubt in my mind. (Or I'd never have taken this picture.)

However, it was a pretty good indicator that I was born to be a film director.  A director with a film in production makes, on average, 17 million decisions per day.  It’s a safe bet that he’s not going to be right on every one.  And that’s okay.  Being right a lot is overrated anyway—show me someone who’s right all the time and I’ll show you someone making safe choices based on avoiding past failures, someone who eliminates the possibility of being surprised by a wrong choice that somehow turns out right.  And that, my friends is the definition of genius—making the wrong choice turn out right.

So being wrong sometimes shouldn’t scare any director.  Especially if that director is able to recognize when something isn’t working and fix it.  So what should scare a director? Doubt.

On a set, the questions never end.

Here’s one view of my typical shooting day:

• 5:30 AM – Wake from 4 hours of sleep.
• 6:30 AM – A half hour before call.  Arrive on set and go over the shot list in my mind.  Alone.  The only questions are from myself.
• 6:50 AM – Ten minutes before call, walk the day’s scenes with the line producer, AD, and DP.   A few questions here or there.  Perhaps just 1,200 or so.
• 7:00 AM – Bang.  Call time.  The questions start as each department head has his first sip of coffee and mentally clocks in.  There are only two states from call time to wrap.  Either the camera is rolling, in which case the crew is silent.  Or it’s not–which means there is literally a line or crowd of people waiting to ask me their next question.  Red or blue?  Backlit-or frontal?  Jacket on or over the shoulder? …times 17 million.  Invariably, the word “Cut” still hangs in the air when I get the first question.  “How was that?”  ”Go again or move on?”  ”Can I have another take?”
• 10:00 PM (probably later) – Shooting wraps.  Now the questions come from the producer as we watch dailies.  Or from the line producer as we go over tomorrow’s schedule.
• after Midnight – I’m back at my hotel.  Again the questions are from myself.  How do we make tomorrow work?
• 1:30 AM – My head hits the pillow and the questions haunt my dreams.

On a film set, everyone constantly needs an answer.  As the director, you are the giver of answers.  By the way, don’t take any of this is a complaint.  Directing is the best job in the world.  All those decisions are direct reflections on your taste and creativity.  That’s why a film can’t help but be something of a reflection on its director’s personality.  It’s all those snap decisions made in a the fervor of shooting—no one can fake that.

The problem is doubt.  As you address each of those questions, you need to give it thought and make a decision.  Usually, by the time you’ve gotten a project to the set, you’ve given it so much thought that the answers are ingrained in your very core.  It’s like taking a test you’ve studied for your whole life.  The answers just spill out of you…of course, it should be this way.  On the rare occasion you’re stumped, you talk it out.  (I find actors are usually the ones who can stump me.  They often present a new insight into a character—even one I wrote—and I always want to honor that.)

A right answer is a beautiful thing.  A wrong answer can be a beautiful thing too—and unexpected, to boot.  Or else ugly as hell and you’ll know pretty quickly that you’re heading down the wrong path.  That’s fine because fixing a mistake is usually as quick as a second take.  Wrong answers rarely kill you… Indecision does.

A director’s Achilles heel is doubt.  The minute you lose that certainty over your rightness and vision for a project is the minute things start going south.  I’ve seen directors get hung up on a question…caught in the lights…doubting their decisions.  It isn’t pretty.  Aspiring directors, believe me, the only answer is to be 100% assured that you’re right.  And if you’re wrong, what the hell!  You’ll fix it in the next take.  Worrying, indecision, doubt gets you nowhere.  Just make the frikin’ decision already.  It’s almost always faster to make the wrong choice, see it’s wrong and then make the right choice than it is to obsess about the options before you and do nothing.

So my advice to directors:  Make a decision.  Keep an eye out in case it isn’t working—and just call it an experiment.  But do not let yourself become mired in doubt and do not share your doubts with even your most trusted crew members…at least until after the shoot wraps.  Making a film is tough on everyone; the crew wants needs to believe that the director is 100% sure of every decision.  It’s selfish of you to deprive them of that.

So be right sometimes, be wrong sometimes, but never, never be in doubt.