Jamey Sheridan Quotes

To find a good script is very important, because the chances and opportunities I would be getting will be very far and few.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one.

By the time I wrote 'Any Given Sunday' or 'Bats,' I sort of knew what my job was in terms of what a writer of dialogue does.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

On the one occasion where I did try writing a screenplay, I found the rewriting just unendurable.

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.

I want to write a film. I need to think of the right idea and focus on that; I love writing.

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.

I know firsthand how much work has usually gone into a screenplay, so if there's something that rings false or a line that I would think would need a tweak or something, I will think long and hard before I even recommend changing it. In that sense, I'm very faithful to the scripts that I get - if they're good scripts.

How can you turn down Marks and Gran? Their scripts are so rich in texture.

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

Lizzy Weiss is such a great writer, and she really writes for the performances.

When you are working on a script, the story itself is not difficult. You say this would happen and then this, resulting perhaps in this. And the dialogue you make as true as you can.

I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.

I am lucky enough to have Aaron Sorkin write what I have to say.

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.

I wouldn't know a good script if it bit me in the face.

I've never been able to write a movie script. I respect that skill so much, but it's not been the way my brain works.