He exaggerates; a musical is much more difficult to make than a toga-fest, and it involves stylistic hurdles that have tripped even the most nimble directors.
It may be unfair to harp on Donen's movie, and Jonathan Demme, one of the most nimble directors in America, must be hoping for a fresh audience, unplagued by the remembrance of films past.
"Working at a certain scale allows the company to be more nimble," Robert O'Meara, director of media and communication at ACI Europe, said in an e-mail.
Miller, freed from the dramatic pretense that weighed down her first three features and 2009 dramedy The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, proves herself a nimble comedic director, with a particular gift for capturing the eccentricities of her flawed characters.
Jeffrey Milarsky was the nimble conductor.
Mr. Linklater is a nimble and versatile director, but what he does best — what he seems to like most — is to film people in conversation.
"I have to give them credit, they're pretty nimble," said Greg Devereux, executive director of the Washington Federation of State Employees, part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme).
On top of that, there's Amazon Web Services director Peter Cohen, Nimble Storage chief executive Suresh Vasudevan and Lookout co-founder Kevin Mahaffey.
But the strategy contains an inherent risk: If a director is not nimble enough, he may miss something.
The movie dazzles in its surfing sequences, in which the director, Sean McNamara, works nimble editing and a tropical palette to a fine sheen.
