Bruce Vilanch Quotes

I think a good script is a rare thing, and I think no matter who you are you have to fight for the good ones.

When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios.

After leaving ImageMovers, I sold two pitches to Fox Atomic, which I then wrote for them.

I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.

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

For sure, without question, the writing is better on TV pound for pound than movies because the businesses have changed so much. So all the great writers would rather work for TV, and they do.

I was reading scripts, doing coverage, for CAA. Reading hundreds and hundreds of scripts across the board, from blind submissions to 'Brokeback Mountain'. It was not always a pleasant task but something, in hindsight, I'm glad I did.

For all the hundreds of scripts that are out there, there's not that many that are amazing.

Whenever I hear the narration for a new film, I have this process back home where my mother reads all my scripts.

Like a lot of people, I sold my first script in graduate school at UCLA, a 'Joan of Arc' for producer Joel Silver.

Everyone in Hollywood has a screenplay.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.

Since my adaptation of Ian McEwan's 'Atonement,' I get sent a lot of novels that people think will work as movies. So every now and then I make a point of sitting down and reading a couple of them.

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 most Hollywood meetings are silly and I truly despise pitching. It's insane to expect someone to come in and tell you the story before they've written it, and buying an idea from someone who can explain it rather than write it is like choosing a mechanic based on his ability to draw a picture of your car's problem.

The most despised sector of Hollywood are the writers. A good writer is quickly promoted to a 'concept man' - and then a producer - because he's too valuable to simply be a writer.

I wrote a script with my brother which ended up, somehow, on the Black List in 2008.

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

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

I write screenplays that don't get made and pilots that don't get picked up, and I re-write other people's movies, and those are all different kinds of fees.

After film school, I would write 8 hours a day on film and 8 hours a night on TV, and then sleep once and a while.

My husband and I are writers, and I wish I could write faster. There are not a lot of movies made with black actors in mind.

I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.

I sat down to take a break from writing a book and wrote a spec feature that would end up being the movie 'Lies & Alibis' with Steve Coogan.