Marshall Curry Quotes

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going.

Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

The so-called commercialism includes elements like story, plots, rhythms and large big scenes.

It really just gives you a sense of when you need to have dialogue and when you don't, and if your pictures are telling the story, you don't need to have all this talking.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

The reason most novelists are not good screenwriters is that you don't have time for a lot of details. Novelists can really create a richer experience for the reader and have many subplots. You only have 90 pages because each page is a minute of screentime. You have to have certain things happen by certain pages, a certain story arc in the movie.

In television, the cuts are so quick: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! I want to shoot two people and sit there for eight minutes and watch them. I've got a lot to learn about television and about the best ways to tell stories directorially in that medium.

I've been accused, many times, as a writer/director, of my pace being too leisurely and too long.

In a film, you only have a finite amount of time, and you're so concerned with saying what happened and making it a gripping short story with a satisfying ending.

I have been in advertising and I know my craft well, but ultimately in cinema every scene has to matter, and that has to do with the writing.

The writing is only ever the attractive thing about a part. And also if all the elements within the writing come together - the character and the structure and the narrative - if they are all there then you become excited.

I'm not a fan of these very cutty, handheld-y kind of films or TV shows, where a cut is just every half second or every two seconds, where you're desensitized to it. To me, a cut should say something and be impactful.

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 combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

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 documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

A lot of the struggle I had with movies is I really loved moments and tones and feelings in a scene, and I loved creating those, but I never really had great stories to string them together.

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.

Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.

Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

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