Betsy Brandt Quotes

For 'Breaking Bad,' it was like, that's one of the best pilots, probably the best pilot I have ever read.

Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.

If you get a script and it's really well written, that's always exciting.

Good scripts are hard to find.

When 'Family Guy' started, we wanted to make it more like a sitcom. And there was very little music.

My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.

I started writing prose before I started writing television. Then 'Breaking Bad' came around, and to me, writing 'Breaking Bad' is like writing a novel each season. So it's been very creatively satisfying writing for the show.

I usually decide if I'm going to do a movie based on if I like the script or not. I thought 'Pulling Strings' had every single element that a classic romantic comedy needs to be a success. It's very well written. The cast was amazing. It was a decision I made based on the power of the script.

The script is always the main preparation for me. Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it, but if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don't need to improvise.

I wrote for 'The Sopranos' and worked on big, blustery characters for quite a while.

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.

All I know is Andrew Davies is an amazing writer; I adore the scripts. I think that Jeremy Piven is outstanding.

But I've never tried writing an episode of 'EastEnders', even as an exercise.

How can you turn down Marks and Gran? Their scripts are so rich in texture.

It makes a world of difference when you start with an amazing script.

I plot the first 5 or 6 chapters quite minutely, and also the end. So I know where I am going but not how I'm going to get there, which gives characters the chance to develop organically, as happens in real life as you get to know a person.

Bill Condon, I must say, may have been one of the best professional experiences of my life, collaborating with him. He, himself, is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. He is a storyteller first and foremost, so we speak the same language. We approach things always from the story.

I have only recently got interested in film, and it is a strange way of working in many ways. But actually, when it is at its best, it's quite an extraordinary way of working between a director and an actor, to really explore an inner life.

I think that it's fun to get the script and open it like a Christmas present. That's 'Alcatraz' or anything that I'm working on. If the groundwork has been laid too much, the surprises aren't there.

Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.'

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Writing a TV show is totally different than writing features, or just, what I started doing is writing features. You write a little bit more organically. You start from the beginning to the end, beginning, middle and end.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.