Kiefer Sutherland Quotes

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

Screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write...He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

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?

The director in TV and the writer and the creator are working very much hand in hand.

I think books and movies are going to go a long way together in the future. I think we writers are very important material for directors.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we've been trying to generate material.

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.

But I'm blessed to work with great people. I collaborate with brilliant stylists both here and in Paris. I work with a great design team. I really allow everyone to bring their ideas. I almost rely on them to inspire me.

My career has gone in such a way that I've gotten to learn that, when you're working with a great storyteller, you don't ask questions; you just trust them.

In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.

I don't do a lot of strategizing, career-wise. I was approached by Chris and Phil, the guys who did 'The Lego Movie.' They gave me my first job on 'Clone High.' We've been friends forever, and they asked me if I wanted to write something with them.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

That's what I've always wanted to do - work with my favorite writers and make something from scratch with them that we can feel like didn't exist before we came in the room.

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

I am very happy to be working with so many talented directors and writers, who are penning scripts that are interesting for me.

I'd love to get in a room with Kanye at some point, have a conversation, and see if something cooks up.

I enjoy storytelling. I like to write it, I like to direct it, I like to act in it, I like to produce it. I like to be around storytellers. That's what excites me.

Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.

I never started writing because I wanted to write myself stuff. It was really more that I had these stories to tell, and I wanted to work with people that I respected and liked.

You're not just writing in a vacuum, and then handing it over to someone else to shoot. You're writing, and then getting feedback from the actor and hearing their voice and how they play things.

I wrote the plot [for the Persepolis ]and Vincent [Paronnaud] and I wrote and discussed the shooting of the script. Vincent then took care of the production design, the actual shooting, and what was going on within each scene. It's very difficult, though, to draw a line between who did what. Because Vincent would say something, and I would add something, and at the end you have this film, yet no clear idea of who did what.