Screenplay Quality Quotes

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver.

The screenplay has to be gripping. That's when the film will work. Then, I see how much I can relate to the character I'm playing.

But the script's got to be at a level that makes it worth going back for, because it's a lot of work to make a movie like this and it's a multi-year project. So we've got our writer Jesse Wigutow on it right now writing, and fingers crossed if it all comes together, as we hope it will, there could be another Tron in the next few years, and it's going to be awesome.

If you have a good thing going behind the scenes, you'll have a good thing going on-screen.

If you don't have a brilliant screenplay, then you either have amazing actors who give you the chance to improve whatever is on the page, or an interesting director who has enough faith in the project that they can carry it through and get it somewhere. One of those factors needs to happen. If not, it's sad.

There are so many factors that go into having a successful movie.. too many that you can't control.

I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.

Little Christian Bale. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I re-watched it not too long ago, and my jaw just hit the floor. The whole time I was like, "Who wrote this? This is unbelievable." And then the credits came up at the end and it was Tom Stoppard, my favorite playwright. It's just an amazing piece of writing.

I always pick what I consider to be good scripts.

Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard.

Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is.

I look at scripts as good or bad. If it's bad, it better pay a lot of money.

I look for an interesting and often times, fresh character. Something different that what is done all the time or than I've done recently. I look at who is directing. Those two variables as well as a third, which is the content and the quality of the screenplay. I look at the arcs of the scenes and characters and relationships.

Overall, I feel that southern cinema, in itself, has taken over the film industry with its content, stories and screenplay.

The screenplay is so well-written in a scruffy, fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it - the noses of those zombie writers who take 'screenwriting' classes that teach them the formulas for 'hit films.'

More often than not, if you've got a good director and a good script you can't really go wrong.

The script is the most important thing for me. I'm advised that other things are important too, and they are. The director that you'll be working with is hugely important, and the cast that are with you is really important as well. But, for me, the thing that gets my heart excited and really makes me invested in something or not is just the quality of the script.

For the most part I pick movies based on the merit of the script, and the merit of the script only.