Haley Joel Osment Quotes

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.

I like films to be complete in their written form.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

Frank called me one day and said, 'I have an idea for a movie, why don't you come over and I'll tell you?' So I went over and we sat down and he said, 'This picture starts in heaven'. That shook me.

Where film is infinitely superior to any other medium is emotion and story and character.

Just telling a story. That's cinema. It's not silent, black and white. It's a simple story that's well made.

It's very different when you're reading a script to when you're watching a movie for the first time.

Whenever you write script without a director, you put in things that point toward a style in which the story will be told, a subjective style.

As a viewer, I really want to watch author-backed stories, and there is something amazing about thrillers, the way it captivates your imagination.

There's a real art to telling a story in two hours, and that will always be something that people are very, very interested in.

My writing has always been more out of the need to write a movie rather than me being a good writer.

I have been in advertising and I know my craft well, but ultimately in cinema every scene has to matter, and that has to do with the writing.

What drew me into making movies is trying to make characters that step off the screen.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

Bill Condon, I must say, may have been one of the best professional experiences of my life, collaborating with him. He, himself, is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. He is a storyteller first and foremost, so we speak the same language. We approach things always from the story.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film.

I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters and suspense.

I hate when you see a film and after one scene you know what's going to happen and you can predict the whole story.

Honestly, there are so many things about structuring a story for film and telling a story for film that are really different from doing radio.

There are a lot of considerations that come into play when you craft one of these 'Saw' scripts, and there's only so much you can put into them.