Pedro Almodovar Quotes

You want to have the experience. As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. You got on a film sometimes and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not. We're good at saying what other people have written, but for the majority of it, that's about it, comedians aside. It's all in the writing. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.

Usually, I write my scripts first, then think of the actors, or I have a reference of someone.

If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation. In this play, I had a strong main character and it involved some creation around him. That's what I like about adapting that particular play because I added some maneuvering space as a scriptwriter to invent my own things.

I pride myself on doing character-driven movies and, when my movies have worked, it's been because of the right casting and the right character, and it just clicks.

I see pictures in my mind and become the character in the song as I'm writing. It's kind of method songwriting, where you're the actor in the song.

In the writing phase, normally I try not to envisage any particular actors because I like to let the characters sort of reveal themselves in that process.

Characters more or less present themselves to me. I don't know their origins. I think if I did, if I seemed to myself to fabricate them, I could not induce suspension of disbelief in myself in the way writing fiction requires.

I imagine them very clearly and then attempt to describe what I can see. Sometimes I draw them for my own amusement! (talking about her characters and scenes)

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

I never have particular actors planned when I'm in the process of writing.

With directing, you've got to find something and drag it up from its inception, and I'm at the early stages of doing that again. There's something all-consuming and addictive about that.

I'm more into describing a scenario and I move around in that scenario.

When I'm writing, I'm creating the story and its character with words. I'm thinking about what the pictures will be like, but I never begin to sketch. The pictures are all in my head.

I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.

You know it's my job to visualize, what is literal or audible, so I designed all the characters, and I designed what they do and how they should do it and so on.

You do a film and you know where you're going, you have this material to stretch and play with as much as possible because you know how it ends.

Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.

What I like most about directing is creating a world more so than anything. To me, the music is the wrapping paper on that world.

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.

Creatively, it's great, because when you write your own movies, you get to create whatever you want.

Usually when you're doing concepts for a character, you just try a couple different things to see what sticks.

I don't tend to cast roles in my head because I spend so much time with these characters and the drawings that they're complete in themselves, you know what I mean?

I'm developing the stuff all the time. There's a film in my head. I'm imagining a film.