Peter Morgan Quotes

I don't write plays for them to be turned into movies.

I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them.

I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta.

I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school - and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my first short in college - which was called 'Extras' - I lost thousands of dollars and made an unsatisfying and incomplete film.

I write plays, and I have a musical that's starting to get produced now. That's what I would love to do, but it's so hard. The only reason people are reading my plays and musicals is because I'm in movies.

I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts.

I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.

I'm basically a writer, it's who I am. I direct and I like theatre directing very much. But I've done 17 movies, they don't say 'Let's get Garry, he'll make a helicopter shot,' they say 'Get Garry, he'll fix the script.'

By the time I was doing "Kill Bill," it was so much filled with prose that, you know, I start seeing why people write a screenplay and make it more like a blueprint, because basically I had written - in "Kill Bill," I had basically written a novel, and basically every day I was adapting my novel to the screen on the fly, you know, on my feet.

I'd love to do writing for Hollywood.

At the end of the day, filmmaking is all about telling stories, and I'm just doing my part.

Every screenwriter worthy of the name has already directed his film when he has written his script.

I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.

I felt film is art and there are people that constructed that art - and that made me want to be a filmmaker.

Being a TV comedian, actor, writer, columnist, and all that is quite helpful to me in acquiring wide varieties of knowledge, which is crucial for filmmaking.

We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it's not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out.

I never think of myself as a celebrity - or even an actor, actually. I think of myself as a writer-director.

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.

I wanted people to know that I'm not just a guy who does weird videos on the Internet. I actually am a filmmaker, and I can tell stories, and I can create something that's 90 minutes long that feels just like any other movie you see in the theater, and hopefully enjoy.

I just thought that Adrienne [Shelly] wrote a great character [for Waitress]. It really was all on the page.

To write, you have to know how to act and know about directing. To act, you also need to know how to write and direct.

Writing and directing just sort of fell into my lap.

A director can come from anywhere, but having a story background, if you have nothing else, is probably a good thing to have because it's really the one tool you need.

"Admission" is Paul Weitz's movie. This is Karen Croner - the screenwriter's - movie. To have such a lovely role in such a beautifully written script offered to me, it's like elves made the shoes.