Jason Reitman Quotes

I think that three-act fundamentalism in film culture is a problem sometimes, because it's almost too obvious, or it's too expected. And it's not the only way to fill two hours, or to phrase things, or to order thoughts, or order ideas.

I love that there's a beginning, middle and end to a film and you can craft what the whole journey is going to look like.

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination.

Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.

Well, I think it's important to have some kind of a narrative engine that pushes the audience through the landscape. But I love films like 'Apocalypse Now,' which is a very mood driven film. It's a magnetic force that's pulling them through.

I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

I want to do film and TV. I want to make good stories. I want to write; I want to be more involved.

The older I get and the more fiction I write, the more I outline, the more I think about plot before I dive in and plunge too far.

The hardest part about storytelling is knowing what happens in the end.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

The structural notions to me always have to be worked out very carefully in the script stage. Whatever a particular structure is. Whether it's chronological or non-chronological. To me that's always about what point of view are we trying to address in the film?

I think our goal and intention is to make sure that, when you watch each episode, you don't have to make that choice, but also that you can have stand-alone episodes, where a story can have a beginning, middle and end.

I think I came to film-making through writing. I started to write, and people, teachers, responded to my writing.

Screenwriting is not an artform, it is a punishment from God.

In film, because you know where the ending is, characters can change, but in television, you substitute revelation for change, and that can be hard to pull off.

To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story.

In writing for movies, you obviously want to resolve things and have a sense of completion at the end - in an ideal way.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

If you don't have a story that will hold the audience, you won't have a successful show.

When I first began to have the initial idea for 'Heartsease,' I just wrote a skeleton story; that is, I started her off as this young, bright 16-year-old and then added the events that occurred and where she and other characters fitted in, even writing 3 different endings, as I was not sure where Mary's story would lead to.

I pretty much believe that a film is a film and when an audience watches a film, they finish it.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.