Screenplay Quotes

I didn't know anything about writing a screenplay, but somehow I ended up rewriting a screenplay.

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.

About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me.

I'm working on a screenplay right now for the BBC, but I hope to have the decks cleared soon so I can get into the studio with my pals and put down some more tracks, try to get a strong dance single together.

Normally you read a screenplay - and I read a lot of them - and the characters don't feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

If I could find the right kind of property, get tied in with the right movie, I'd love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right now.

I want to release another CD this year, finish writing a screenplay, and make another short film.

For me, when working on a film or play or television show, everything for me starts with the screenplay and I am devoted to that and that is what I work from. Any research I do or any preparation I do on my own is all ultimately in service of that.

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.

If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.

I've never read a screenplay in advance. You trust the artist.

If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.

Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

The last person they expected to connect with a screenplay was the comedic, blonde actress with the funny voice.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech.

I look for an interesting and often times, fresh character. Something different that what is done all the time or than I've done recently. I look at who is directing. Those two variables as well as a third, which is the content and the quality of the screenplay. I look at the arcs of the scenes and characters and relationships.

This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.