Daniel Handler Quotes

I think it's counterproductive for actors to come to the set with well-thumbed copies of the book their film is adapted from.

A script arrived, and on the front cover - scrawled really big, as if it were a book report - is 'Django Unchained, written by Quentin Tarantino.' And I thought, 'Well, no art department came up with this; this is Quentin's writing.'

I was never conscious of my screenplays having any acts. It's all bullshit.

Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way.

Designing Woman was written for the screen.

When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me. So when David Fincher comes along and wants to direct 'The Social Network,' when Bennett Miller comes along and wants to direct 'Moneyball,' or when Danny Boyle wants to direct 'Jobs'? Hallelujah. I want them directing it.

I take time to write my script, if I have more scripts, I will make more movies.

I became really aware that when you're making a movie, you're making it three times. You're making it when you're writing it. You're making it when you're shooting it. And then you're remaking it again when you're editing it.

Every film starts with the script.

I've never known a situation in my career where a terrible script turned into a movie that was out of this world or was a success.

It takes a while to get a movie together, and they don't start talking books until the movie is close to being finished.

My Writers Guild of America card is one of my proudest possessions. I was given it after being invited to write the script for a film of my last novel, 'Me Before You,' which is being made by MGM. Whenever I look at it, I think, 'I'm a Hollywood writer!'

I love the filmmaking process. It can be loud sometimes, and people love having conference calls, so working on a book is the polar opposite. It's very relaxing.

What's going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I'll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it.

'Unforgiven' is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, 'This is great, but I'd like to do this when I'm older.' So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

Maybe there should be less of a mystique around making movies. I just don't think that there's any real mystery there.

I've worked on movies that are being rewritten as you go, but you take so long and so much time doing it, that it's not really an issue knowing what's going to happen or how the movie is going to end.

I was halfway through a rough draft of 'The Sisters Brothers' when it came time to start the 'Terri' adaptation.

I don't believe in development. I believe in pre-pre-production, so when I sit down with an idea for a movie, I'm thinking I'm going to make this film. I don't think about anything else.

I opened the script to the 'The Wall,' and 15 minutes later I was done with it, and I loved the movie and wanted to be part of it.

You can have a wonderful time doing a movie and believe in it completely, and then you see the final product, and it doesn't look anything like what you thought it was going to.

I read bits and pieces of 'Twilight' as we were making it.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

When there's a good script, everybody circles.