Brad Hall Quotes

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

When I give notes on a script, I say, 'Guys, I may drift, but it's part of the process.' So I'm aware that I'm drifting, but I'm grabbing a lot of stuff.

Everything I write in my show is a collaboration with a team.

In many senses, 'Borgen' was a very democratic show. I was always invited to hear the writers' thoughts for the next episodes and allowed to comment on them.

A lot of directors keep writers away because the writers know the script better than anybody, obviously they do, and they have certain intents. But a lot of people would be surprised to know that writers are pretty flexible when it comes to their work.

If the opportunity came my way, if somebody wanted me to look over a script or sit in a room in sort of like a brainstorming session... I would certainly be open for that.

It's madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.

I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.

When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very difficult position for a screenwriter who's put so much passion into that, into the writing.

Because I work in television, I always knew that I loved working with writers. It's very collaborative. You're always in a room full of writers.

Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.

It doesn't help anybody to put out a bad script.

When you have a good script you're almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

Good scripts have always been, I think, hard to find. Good storytelling, good writing - it's just not easy. I have made it a point that - if I'm going to put the energy into doing this work - I will wait until I find something I'm really happy with.

I think film and television - particularly film - you are very isolated as a writer. If you're lucky, you have a good relationship with the director. Then you do make that development and come on set and be part of something. But ultimately, your work is kind of done by the time you come on set.

Ever since my first film, I had more producers than scripts. And I've realised that a certain project requires a certain kind of producer for it to be made well.

It's good to work with a writer-director.

If my film fails, I never think it was because the script was weak.

It takes a year for us to generate a script that is ready to shoot. There are maybe 20 drafts of a script. And, each time, someone saying 'I don't really love this,' we discuss it for 15 minutes.

Filmmaking is all about people management.

If you bring in actors right when you're breaking story, it has a 'too many cooks in the kitchen' effect.

Sometimes when you do a whole script, you hand it off, and it gets rewritten by a bunch of people, and people don't really get that much of a sense of how funny you can be.

I've never been in a writer's room.