Orson Welles Says It Best
The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night.
U.S. filmmaker, actor, and producer Orson Welles (1915–1984) in a speech, Nov. 4, 1985, at Hollywood Foreign Press Association.