Ryan Coogler Quotes

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

For the serious biographer, history and the life story of a real individual are inseparably intertwined. Get the facts wrong, or distort them, and the life story gets distorted: becomes fiction.

With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material.

I'm a great believer in research. I have to know about a place before I write a story that is set in that place.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

I love writing traditional magazine pieces, and especially their breadth of reporting and the deliberateness of the writing.

I think any period in history can be adapted into interesting fiction, as long as you approach the actual history with respect.

I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.

I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.

I do my best to build a strong factual foundation for each of my novels and rely upon my author's notes to keep my conscience clear.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction.

Telling Alan Turing's story in a two-hour film was a tremendous challenge. It felt in some small way like our filmmaking version of breaking the enigma code.

The script is always the main preparation for me. Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it, but if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

You know, the process of making a documentary is one of discovery, and like writing a story, you follow a lead and that leads you to something else and then by the time you finish, the story is nothing like you expected.

Most filmmakers aren't very interested in history. They worry constantly that people will be bored.

I do crazy amounts of research. I want this stuff to 'work,' so to speak. I need to be, at least to me, believable - because if I feel - if I cannot invest some element of verisimilitude, the reader is absolutely not going to buy in.

I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research.

I always like when things are loosely based on real events. That always makes it more interesting because there's a lot of research you can do.

I am a writer and editor with a passion for true storytelling. To me, science matters, research matters and knowledge matters, whatever the field.

Nonfiction means that our stories are as true and accurate as possible. Readers expect - demand - diligence.