Brian Helgeland Quotes

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

It's difficult to get films made, especially films about poets.

It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go.

It takes a long time to get a film made.

I would love to produce a film. I have written a script and am in the process of writing another, so maybe it will happen down the road. I would love to do a film in Africa.

I don't know the figures, but Hollywood must buy 100 rights for every movie that actually gets made.

I wrote 'All is Lost' while editing 'Margin Call'. I did that long before I knew if I was ever going to get to make another movie.

I think if you get your fifth script made, that's the fast track. But there's no guarantee any of them will get made.

I remember the first script I wrote after 'Swingers' was a Western, and I just couldn't get it made.

It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

It took 17 years to get 'Rambling Rose' made from the time Calder Willingham wrote the script adapted from his novel. Ed Scherick, the producer, was interested in it. Martha Coolidge was interested in directing it.

'Hardware' came about because I had written quite a few scripts and hadn't had any luck getting them made.

I want to make a movie with Al Pacino someday.

My dream is to become a director. I want to direct a Hindi film.

There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.

You never know where your next movie is going to come from. You just have to fall in love with something because it's going to be taking up every moment of spare time in your life for about two years. You're going to be dreaming about it and thinking about it and becoming obsessed with it.

As a producer, it's your job to bang on the table and convince studio heads why great movies should be made.

I have a pile of scripts at home that I love. Some of them are hard to get made. We have to give up stuff. It's hard to get movies made.

Many times, what's in the script doesn't make it to the film these days, and when you choose a job, you take it based on genre and whom you're going to work with, if you believe in them.

There aren't enough good scripts.

In Hollywood, they create banks of scripts, whether they are used or not.

I thought about making movies. It hit me when I was about 14, 15 years old.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

There's no need there to sit with the filmmaker for 11 years to develop the script, or go round the world raising money.

It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.