William Devane Quotes

I'm used to changing a lot of the dialogue. But if I feel like the script is working, I don't want to mess with it.

The key is, if you're not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.

I like to write scenes in the middle of the night. We could change every word of 'Family Ties' between Monday and Friday.

Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.

You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

Unless you're playing a historical figure, a writer or director can change their minds. And sometimes your job is to make them change their minds - to make them believe that you're the one that can do it.

Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge.

I've rewritten a lot of the scripts I've done. 'Little Shop Of Horrors' was a complete rewrite, but I didn't touch the dialogue. Essentially, I'm a very good editor.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

The final product in a play is not just the written word. It's the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it's only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

I generally edit quite heavily. In general, there aren't many scenes that are sitting where they sat in the script in the final form.

I like talking about comic book process, and one of the things is that I have plans going ahead for years, and the plans constantly get thrown away and shifted. There's a difference between planning and what actually happens in life, and comics have a life of their own.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

I never write with an actor in mind - never.

Shooting in Hong Kong, you can do whatever you want, even change the script every day. In Hollywood, you have to have a lot of meetings.

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.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

They're pretty particular about what they show. They certainly edit the scripts and have conversations with the writers about what they are and aren't willing to portray. But the writers and the network are pretty much on the same page.

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.

My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it.

What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?

When you're lucky enough to get paid a nice chunk of change to write a movie or a TV show, you have no right to complain, really. I guess it's more of an appeal to the powers that be that the less they interfere, the more likely, actually, they are to get something that works, I think.

These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.