Stephen Chbosky Quotes

After I sold my screenplay adaptation of 'Rain Fall' to Sony Pictures, I had no more creative involvement.

Typically, when you sell your story rights to a movie production company, they can do whatever they want with it. The writer is typically not involved anymore.

I always felt once it goes into movie land, the book belongs to someone else.

The things I have sold to film, I've sold because I was happy to rent out the right to adapt those works. Some things, I haven't sold to film, because I was less interested in having no control over the adaptation.

I've done a gazillion readings that have gone on to be movies that are made without me.

Authors of books are not given very much control over the films that are made from their books.

And usually the studios they don't want you to have credit for your movies because they want to take credit for the movies because if you get credit for your movies they've got to pay you more.

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies.

There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.

I don't know the figures, but Hollywood must buy 100 rights for every movie that actually gets made.

No one forces me, or any other writer, to sell a film option on the books. If you don't want to run the risk that the filmmakers may adapt your work in a way you don't like, then you don't sell the option. You know when you sell it that they will have to make some changes, just because film and TV are different media than books.

Once you work with a studio on a film, the studio is sort of like this enormous clam that just opens, takes everything and then closes, and no one enters again. They own it all.

I sold my first screenplay six months before 'Glee,' but they had the option for a year and now it's back with me.

I have always wondered why the movie industry was so firmly persuaded that the original author could be of no possible help in the case of a remake or any other change in a work.

I've been approached in the past to option my stories for television, but prior to Evergreen, there were no assurances the production would be filmed in Alaska.

Most writers can tell stories of how their books failed to be made into films.

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.

In 1995, I sold the rights to Harry Bosch to Paramount. They had several screenplays written, but a movie never happened. Harry Bosch went on the shelf, and I had to wait 15 years to get him back.

I charged Rs 101 for the rights to my biopic.

What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office, and they say, 'Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?'

If you have sold the film rights to somebody, take your money and leave. If the producers need you, they will call you. But you have to be careful about who you are selling your book to, and ensure that it is not tampered with.

Hollywood would much prefer the author be dead, so that they can buy the book and do what they want to do with it.

There comes a time as you continue to write and work on scripts and screenplays where you realize that you have opinions about the next step of the process, and you kind of want more control over the translation from page to screen.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I'm concerned, that part is Greg's for life. I've had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I've always refused.