Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Quotes

Every film starts with the script.

And it is a folly to try to craft a novel for the screen, to write a novel with a screen contract in mind.

The first and primary requirement for me in a director that I'd want to work with is: do they love writing, and do they love the collaboration process with writers?

There are no great scripts - just great films.

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

I like writing for movies. It's nice to be alone working on fiction in your room, and then it's nice to be in a room with a bunch of people working on a movie.

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

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.

There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.

It's good to work with a writer-director.

Writers are first directors. When directing our own scripts, we would have a better vision and clarity than directing the stories penned by others. I personally think that a writer's job is tough than a director's.

As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.

It certainly made a film writing career for me.

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

I spent a long time working in the movies to figure out that kind of acting and also how to write and produce for the screen.

I allowed the scriptwriter to come to my parties for research and it's a good thing he did otherwise I don't think Personal Services would've been so good.

In the case of 'Blood Stone,' the producers, EON, Michael Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, David Wilson and Gregg Wilson, had an idea for a story and had a lot of it done. And I came in, worked with them, fleshed it out.

Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.

I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.

The script for 'Thirteen' is tight, and not because of the now-famous six day writing spree, but more because it started out as 15 pages longer.

A good script and perfect casting, that's 90 percent of the work.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.