Opening Scene Quotes

Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

Don't be late to the theater. The opening scene is a goody.

If I had been on 'Ally McBeal,' I would have been seen coming out of the shower on the first show.

I love Sam Mendes, but I went to see 'Spectre' with my kid, and the opening scene of the Dia de Muertos party, with this kind of tropical music, in downtown Mexico City, with all these people dancing like it's the Rio de Janeiro carnival... I had to laugh.

In TV the main purpose is to have them keep their hands off the dial. In movies, where you have a captive audience, the opening is intrinsic to the film.

I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene just came to me.

I hate prologues because they're kind of gimmicks to suck you in.

Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.

With 'Puddle Cruiser,' the first 15 minutes are the weakest. When you're total unknowns and you have a weak opening, it's a real problem. At some screenings, we'd see the odd walkout before the movie even got going. But to counteract that, we'd do sketches before the show to introduce the film.

How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.

Look at the opening sequence of 'The Blues Brothers,' which starts at the prison. The way it was filmed, it does not look like a comedy. I thought that was great.

First episodes are difficult things to write.