Brian Helgeland Quotes

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.

It's much more interesting for me to think that taking a chunk of experience and mushing it up together with other things that are inventible, remembered from some other time or stolen from other people's stories... and see if I can make it into something that works, an object, a little machine that runs.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

I think the idea of creating a character from scratch, one that has not been done in a novel or an existing story, is immensely exciting, terrifying and ultimately rewarding.

I don't care what I do - act, stand-up, write, direct - it doesn't matter as long as I'm being creative and it's good work.

I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.

The truth is that every writer, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is trying to write something truly original and that's what I think I'm doing.

I believe in creative work.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.

I write everything I do. On the average, it takes you about sixty months from the first molecule of an idea to it being in front of an audience. I'm actually somebody that creates their own stuff.

Seventy percent of what I write, I throw out. I can write very easily, but writing original things is the hard bit.

What I'm really trying to do is create unique characters.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

I've never written anything that I haven't wanted to write again. I want to, and still am, writing 'A Few Good Men' again. I didn't know what I was doing then, and I'm still trying to get it right. I would write 'The Social Network' again if they would let me, I'd write 'Moneyball' again. I would write 'The West Wing' again.

For me, working on original material is very important.

It's a challenge for any writer to write beyond what he knows. You get material, adapt it, and do the best you can with it.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

I have such deep appreciation for artists who have the ability to create something from within, something completely unique and original to each piece of work.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

This is writing. You cut out chunks of your own memories, rework them, bleed into them, breathe into the raw clay, and hope the creature lives.

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

I have no imagination; I just steal from life and change the color. Then it's a comic book.

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

Without playing with fantasy, no creative work has yet come into being.