Shannyn Sossamon Quotes

Filmmaking is always sort of building a mosaic of this arc of what the character is going through.

The first season of a show's always a rollercoaster because nobody knows what they're doing. You gotta rush through the season trying to figure out: What is this show? And who are these characters?

There are movies that I've made where I thought I was going to be good, but when it was cut it together it wasn't. And there are a lot of movies that, for one reason or another, just don't become popular. So to me it's always been a little bit of a roll of the dice. That's the way it goes.

Part of accepting a role is being interested in the character and part of it is being interested in the movie or what it means and the exploration of it. But it's more about not knowing the answers to certain questions but wanting to go on the journey of discovery to find the answers.

If a character is going to end up one way, you start them a certain way. If they're gonna end up the polar opposite of that, you might start them differently to have dramatic integrity to their journey.

I'm not one of those actors who likes to analyze things too much, so I trust what the writers are doing with the characters, in order to give them their journey. My job is to come in and try to make those words on the page come alive on camera.

My favorite thing in moviemaking is to shoot in chronological order if at all possible, because it just helps for continuity and all the logistical purposes. It also helps with performance and the journey of each character, but I also think it's good for the director and everyone [else] involved.

Yeah, and the language the "we" has, and the character the "we" has. Because that was the part of the book that I didn't plan out, but the part that I was most curious about as I was writing. You know what you're doing, but you're sometimes still sort of curious as you're writing it.

The creation of the island, or the impression of the island, as it changes in the mind of the character also came in to play... there was another very important collaborator, Rob Legato, on special visual effects. And then ultimately there's Thelma Schoonmaker, who keeps me focused during the editing of the picture.

The intimate conversations have its moments, because you have to sell the characters, because there is so much going on. It's so easy to get lost in the special effects and forget about the performances. The dialogue scenes have been great. It's been great working with Bryan and the writers to find where we're going and what's the story. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting.

It's a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it's very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.

The movies I make tend not to be quite reality but the characters are inspired by real people and they're always very personal.

When I start writing a new imaginary future, I have no idea what it is. The characters arrive first. They help me figure out where they are living and I get to fill in the gaps with that and where we are. So when I get to the end of the process of composition, if I feel that I have really done my job, I have no idea what I've got - and I then spend essentially the rest of my life figuring out what it might mean.

It sounds really corny but every film that you do is its own journey, it's its own experience, it's its own thing. Often you think it's going to be one way and then it goes another way - you think you can chart a character and then other things happen. That's the amazing thing about our jobs, it's constantly changing and it's extremely dynamic and you therefore have to be dynamic as well.

When I'm trying to imagine something, I have a few elements, a few ideas, maybe a certain actor or actress I want to create a certain type of character for, or maybe a certain place.

I've never really been a fan of violence. I'm more into the characters and their journey and those kinds of movies don't really allow for that. It's a different focus.

My dad told me, 'Your movie's never as good as the dailies and never as bad as the rough cut.

It's really hard to make a good film; it's really, really hard. So, the director's very important, and a character that can be described with more than one or two adjectives, maybe with contradictions. Contradictions are always good because that's truthful.

My own personal process with movies is to develop the characters with the actors and, when I've done that properly, you can't imagine anyone else, but that actor, playing that part.

Screenwriting you don't necessarily have to do the job of the costume designer and the prop master and the set designer. It's more just about finding the visuals and finding these characters through dialogue.

When you do a normal film, you play the character for three months and you say goodbye to him. And then, when you watch the movie, you say, "I wish I could have done that differently. I wish I could have added this to it."

When I'm writing, I don't put faces on the characters. When I finish the first draft of the script, I start visualizing, and sometimes then I think about one actor.

I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.

My writing's like a journey. I'll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I'll make some of those stops and some of them I won't. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you're going to do. It's all the scenes where your characters really come from.