Rajkumar Hirani Quotes

Artists forget than the first purpose of a comic character is to convey emotion. Everything else, like realism, or other kinds of virtuosity, is an optional extra. If you sacrifice expression for the sake of other concerns, you're putting the cart before the horse.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.

In 'Beowulf,' director Robert Zemeckis uses a technique called 'motion capture' to conjure fantastical things, angles into action and sweeping vistas to stun your eyes and take your breath away. But what he hasn't mastered and what the technique can't do is this: emotion capture.

In television writing, you want to hear what the characters say as opposed to giving them something to say. It's the same with the cartoons.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from - what he means by this or by that.

We're used to a story in modern terms as an information delivery device. Certainly on television and even with the studio films, there's really only one note that you get, and that's clarity. And people will sacrifice everything for clarity. They'll sacrifice the joke. They'll sacrifice the moment, or the romance.

The core to what makes Fincher really interesting - all the technique and all that, that is not in the center even if it's a big big part - what is in the center is the characters, and he really is interested in that.

When I watch a movie, someone's beauty isn't what engages me: it's what's going on internally. And I imagine it's what the audience thinks, too.

It's hard to tell writers, especially in movies, that words are secondary. Behavior is important.

It's much better to write a book and stick to the research - that's history. In cinema, emotional truth and psychological truth is much more important.

It's much easier for me to think in terms of character movement and emotion and story rather than, 'What are some wacky hijinks we can throw together?'

'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.

I feel, in drama, you don't need to be fed everything. Even though sometimes when you watch, you want to know what happened and you want to see it, I feel like sometimes it's so much stronger to see the effects that those actions have had.

It was always about the story rather than the character.

I have only recently got interested in film, and it is a strange way of working in many ways. But actually, when it is at its best, it's quite an extraordinary way of working between a director and an actor, to really explore an inner life.

I want to tell authentic, real stories with real characters.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

I think I can speak with a degree of authority... today, the biggest driving force of movies is pace; God help you if you try to put in a scene that is about character and not plot.

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

I think all television has to be about relationships and I don't think horror for the sake of it can work unless you're able to ground it in some kind of relationship.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

I am attracted to the complexities and deeper truths of characters, and I can't name a favourite role any more than I can name a favourite food!

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described.