Scott Foley Quotes

I've been in the game long enough to know what elements you have to package together to get a movie into production.

My dad always produces, and I would always sit in producers' meetings with him. I like the whole thing of putting a movie together. I think that's very exciting.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

With 'The Last Picture Show,' Peter Bogdanovich brought the script to the company that made it. They liked it, and they gave him the money he needed to make the film. He cast it with the actors that he thought were right for the parts. Now, it's the reverse.

There is a variety of different kind of producers. I'm a very hands-on, creative producer. I find material that I think would make a good movie or TV show, find the right financier/studio/network, hire a writer, get a good script, find a director, and collaborate with him/her to cast the movie and hire department heads.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it.

Certainly, for me, and it's gone this way on every project I've worked on, the "writing" never ends until you're done with the movie.

Sometimes I watch films that I can't believe got made. Especially because I read scripts that are truly incredible, that will never get made. I don't know who is behind those decisions. It's like you just have to doodle something on a page about the underdog who finally gets the girl and the film gets made.

Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.

Inherently, making a movie is tough because there's so much anticipation when it happens - even if everything goes well.

With me, I probably work a lot more than people assume I do, but people don't realize how much work goes into writing and producing and making a movie.

I am no expert on tax; I'm a film producer. I read books and think about which ones would make good movies, and then I work with directors in order to make them.

I wrote 'All is Lost' while editing 'Margin Call'. I did that long before I knew if I was ever going to get to make another movie.

I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.

What you do is get the right director and the right screenwriter and the right cast. It's a fantastic job.

I don't think I'll ever be a producer who's into taking the meetings and fighting the big fights with studios. I really don't like that part. I'm much more interested in the material.

To me the only real star of the movie is the writer. And I work with writers very closely, from outline to first draft and on to the seventh draft, whatever it takes. Then my job is to support the director to make the best movie we can. Some producers try to go past them, but my job is to support them.

I think the toughest thing is to describe what a producer does because they basically do everything. They follow a project from the start through the rest of its life and, along the way, are a part of every single aspect of its growth. It's tremendously enriching, though, because you get to know and live with the movie in its entirety.

Honestly, when you're making a movie, you never say, 'Oh, this one's going to suck and go straight to video.' When you're in it, you think you're doing the best work you can do. You're surrounded by people who are working hard. Everybody's hopeful.

The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas.

I don't make movies because I love to act. I make movies because I like to make movies, and I like to be a part of that process.

In fact, I had the idea because of Peter Falk. I saw my dad watching a Peter Falk movie and something clicked in my head. I gotta go make a movie for Peter Falk and me.

It took 17 years to get 'Rambling Rose' made from the time Calder Willingham wrote the script adapted from his novel. Ed Scherick, the producer, was interested in it. Martha Coolidge was interested in directing it.

Nowadays, to get a movie greenlit, you have to make an incredible effort.