David Labrava Quotes

The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.

When I wrote for TV, I was always thinking in terms of character and story. After fifteen years, it became hard-wired in me.

It's hard writing screenplays.

I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the screenplay, you have to sit down and tell them what's going to happen.

I studied screenwriting at film school and was constantly learning how to construct three-act dramas.

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 didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

I want to write a film. I need to think of the right idea and focus on that; I love writing.

I'm crazy about 'Breaking Bad,' but I wouldn't know how to write an episode of it.

It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

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.

The elegance of a really good screenplay, I admire it. I can't do it.

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'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.

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

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

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

We start with strong characters and build the movie from there. That not to say we don't struggle with story - that's the most challenging part.

Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.

Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down.

You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process.