Screenplay Development Quotes

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

Be passionate about your [movie] material, because you're going to have to overcome a lot of "No's," and it's that passion that fuels the fight.

If I had a script that I was ready to shoot tomorrow, I'd work on it every day until we got into production as soon as possible, but I don't have that script yet, so I'm trying to find and support writers, really young writers and hopefully come across a story that I wanna tell one day.

Normally with film, it's normal for the screenwriter to never be seen again after finishing until the premiere.

I have no desire to write anything for screen. That's a great talent.

Writing a screen play with a group of collaborators is like the Lennon McCartney collaboration .... sometimes one or two people do more than others on certain parts of the process and vice versa.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

A great screenplay is the most powerful bait in Hollywood.

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing.

We can't make movies without scripts, and there's no cost to writing a script, so my advice to newcomers is do it yourself: Write your own script, shoot your shorts, edit your shorts.

I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit. Sometimes the first draft will come out at 200 pages. I think and think and I go, "um this story is about the brother that appears on page 178." I go back and I rewrite.

The only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one.

With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.

With my two brothers, Jean-Marie and Joel, I wrote a two-page story and wanted to make some kind of movie. We met a French production company, called Why Not?, and the first name we put on the list was Ken Loach. It was a dream for all of us. So, we tried and we met Ken and Paul Laverty, his writer, and they read the two pages and were inspired by that to do something. Paul had the freedom to do his own story - and he wrote his own story, which is better than the one we'd written.

I much prefer writing an original movie with the screen in mind to transferring a play to the screen.

I never watched a frame of the film until it was finished.

You have to have a good script. You have to have compelling and complicated characters that you want to hang out with. Also, since you're going to be living with your crew and cast, I think it's really critical to create a great working environment, because we're spending so many days, so many hours together.

The difference between a movie and a play is that the production you end up with is the production. If a movie that I spent time on turns out to be crap, it's never going to be made again.

In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.

My flag is always flying. My shingle is always out. I'm always looking for movie ideas. The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas. That's the real goal.

I don't card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don't edit.

I became obsessed with the true stuff, and that led to shaping 'The Way Back' screenplay somewhat toward a minimalist style, to avoid free-hanging moments, and to hold the music back, so it would never lead you to an emotion, and to try to make the emotions as real as I could.

In film, it is always collaborative, and so to me, it doesn't make sense to not be collaborative in one of its most critical arenas - which is the screenplay.