Travis Beacham Quotes

TV is a writer's medium.

I think I might want to get into development, as in developing my own sort of piece, whether it be for the stage or the big screen or for television.

You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.

I'll always love movies. But there's something I love very much about TV, when you shoot episodes while other episodes are still being written.

Without writers, none of the entertainment would exist. It starts with writers. Writers are the most important piece of the entire puzzle.

There's such good writing now on television and I don't see a lot of great writing on films sadly.

I got a job as an assistant film editor, which lasted for a few years, but I found writing incredibly difficult, and I thought, 'How am I going to make a film if I can't write?' I didn't really comprehend that someone else would do that bit.

I went to journalism school, so sometimes writing the script of 'Being Mary Jane' is me putting my journalism hat on.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

As a journalist, as a screenwriter and as a director, I'm trying to tell compelling and truthful stories.

I used a video camera, and shot on film cameras at school and stuff, but I had a lot more training as a writer. I kind of live like a writer. I get up and I write. I've done that my whole life.

I've often said, not totally jokingly, that screenwriting doesn't really qualify as real writing at all. You don't string sentences into paragraphs. You don't maintain a constant breath, or create internal rhythms, or even develop a fully-formed thought. The camera does all that work for you!

The muscles that writers need for film are very different from TV muscles. Now, when I hire the writers and put the writers' room together, I know where their muscles need to be.

Of all the disciplines involved in making anything - TV, film or anything I do - the writing is the most valuable commodity.

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.

On cable now, the writer is king. Any actor chases that.

I was attracted to filmmaking in college because of my love of storytelling. You can have such an impact and reach a broader audience than conventional journalism.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.

Screenwriting is the most prized of all the cinematic arts. Actually, it isn't, but it should be.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

My M.F.A was in directing, and all the films I've made, for film school and after, I've written, directed and shot.

Do you know how long it took me to write 'For a Few Dollars More'? Nine days.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

If it were all in the script, why make the film?