Xavier Dolan Quotes

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

If I can be dead honest with you, when I first see the script for a new episode of 'Endeavour,' if anything jars, I say, 'What's this? Has it got a place in our story?' And if it hasn't, it has to go.

You can't fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.

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

I started out working as a script editor and storyliner.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

Finding a good script is really difficult and the scariest thing of all is when they say about a script that's not right, "we will fix it.." It's like before you get on the Titanic and you see a big hole. In process, it's too late.

When you have great scripts, everything is very easy and fun.

When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

Unlike fiction, which you create before you go into production, with reality you kind of create it after everything is produced. The drama and the storytelling is really done in post.

Writing scripts is a laborious job that can be a real pain.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

I love it when actors come to you with a problem and you have to listen. You'd like them to just get on with it, but it often means that there's a problem with the script.

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.

Television is such an evolving medium. When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.

Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.

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

I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

I'm very interested in the editing process - in all aspects of film-making, really.

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.

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.

When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.

I take time to write my script, if I have more scripts, I will make more movies.

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