Craig Mazin Quotes

Other than Peter Jackson doing 'Lord of the Rings,' I don't get it when filmmakers follow up a movie with a sequel to the same movie. God bless 'em if they can be up for it, but that would drive me insane.

Too many new writers dress up old cliches.

And I'm not anti-sequel, but I just feel like there are very few ideas that are meant to be continued.

I think we have become oversaturated with tired fictional narratives.

There are phrases that are totally cliche that we, as songwriters, owe it to ourselves to not use again.

By the time I finished comedy, I was really burnt out of it. I had had enough. I don't really have a strong desire to prove myself in that area, or to go back to it in any great way.

I suppose all writers worry about the well running dry.

The things we always disengage with are one-sided stories or one-sided characters. They're very boring. When you feel like you're being hit over the head, you disengage.

You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground.

I don't know about doing a sequel. I think you can retroactively damage a product by adding to it.

I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end.

Very few artistic partnerships last more than 10 years, and if they do they tend to go down the tubes.

I am a little suspicious of industry paradigms. I feel like so many movies and TV shows feel so familiar because of over-reliance on these paradigms.

I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work.

In 'Scream 2', they have this discussion about how sequels always suck.

Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time.

Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion.

Probably not much of a song left in me, you know, if any, because I've written so many, some 250 songs or 300 or whatever it is.

I used to love Woody Allen but feel he's become a hack as a director. 'Bullets Over Broadway' is the only film of his I've enjoyed in the last 10 years.

I am a fan of sequels even though they are inevitably awful.

Ever since 'Strange Heaven,' I haven't really reread my old work. Not so much because I don't like the writer I was, or because I find flaws in the writing, but more because I get so burnt out on a novel once I've finished writing, revising, editing and copy editing it that I genuinely never want to look at it again after it's gone to press.

In 2012, I really thought, 'That's it. It's over. I've written what I can write.'

You can only be independently creative for so long until your brain burns out.

Sequels are generally done in a rush. They're done with a sense of urgency. The first time, you spend a long time developing to get it over the line. The second time, you don't. Your expectations are different, and your motivations are different.

I tire of franchises, remakes, and endless sequels.