Ronnie Screwvala Quotes

It seems so cliched and obvious, but write the movie you want to see in the theater.

Hollywood has its own way of telling stories. I was just telling stories that I was familiar with. And it's what I want to do in the future: I want to take my audio cinema and put it on the screen.

Writing fiction is the 'job' I try to keep at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful accident, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I have done some work in film before, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access feature back in my 20s.

I always have a backlog of like seven movies that I want to make.

I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.

I originally went to school to be a filmmaker. And so it's a big part of how I think and how I write. And it inspires me a lot.

At the end of the day you do have to write a short novel beforehand, called a script, before you can make a movie.

The secret of making movies is having the strongest possible script.

It certainly made a film writing career for me.

I think of myself more as a filmmaker or as a film person than as strictly just a writer. I don't come out of playwriting or anything like that.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

I have stories that I'd like to maybe one day consider directing, but you need a lot of time to write and put it together.

I wasn't trained as a writer-director. And the projects I write are difficult to finish.

There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver.

When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. That's what writing a screenplay is.

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

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

I love making movies and hope to write my own screenplay someday and do some producing and be behind-the-scenes as well.

The film industry sees the writer as fungible: The thinking goes, As long as we have Brad Pitt and all this money, we have a great film! No, you need a writer with voice and an engaging story, or what you have is a bomb.

Everyone has an idea that they think would be a great movie. Everyone has a cousin who they think you should work with.

I'm working on a few different films and I'm just searching for the right new story to tell. As a director, you just have to kind of like just get through the first project before starting on the next one.

The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.

'Unforgiven' is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, 'This is great, but I'd like to do this when I'm older.' So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.