Script Acquisition Quotes

Good scripts are difficult to come by in the industry, especially if you are an outsider.

It's very, very rare in this business [moviemaking] where a script lands on your lap ready to go.

It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff.

'The Blind Side' took forever to get it out of 20th Century Fox in turnaround. It was one of three different movies I was involved with then. 'The Blind Side' just happened to be the one that got made.

Howard Minsky had gotten the script to her agent prior to my involvement.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

I just couldn't believe that it [Into the Forest script] had fallen into my lap, because I felt so incredibly connected to my character, and I understood her, and I really...I haven't had that feeling about a script since I had read Thirteen or The Wrestler when I was just like, "No one else can do this." I just feel so passionate about it.

My priority is the script. Get me a good script, and I will sign the movie. I think I should leave the casting up to the experts!

I don't know the figures, but Hollywood must buy 100 rights for every movie that actually gets made.

I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.

It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.

House was the first film where I had no influence on the script. I had to buy the script with the game rights.

I think a good script is a rare thing, and I think no matter who you are you have to fight for the good ones.

It's always once the script's done in the first two years if it doesn't get going somehow or another, I've never had an old script that someone's made later on.

In Hollywood, they create banks of scripts, whether they are used or not.

People think you're like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you're hustling, you're desperate, you're panicked and you're horrified. The movie you think you're going to do next, you don't do. The movie you think you're never going to do, you make.

I'm still fighting for parts - it's not like I'm sitting with a big pile of scripts putting them in a 'yes' and 'no' pile.

Good scripts that are offered to me are few and far between, so I pick the best that I get.

I have a pile of scripts at home that I love. Some of them are hard to get made. We have to give up stuff. It's hard to get movies made.

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.

I had heard that Robert Duvall was interested in doing 'Lonesome Dove,' and he's one of those actors with whom I'd work on any project. So I tracked down the script and started to bug the producer, Dyson Lovell, to get in there.

Writers are so used to books being optioned and then the movie never happens.

I sold my first script when I was 21 - this kids' adventure movie that never got made. I just bought that one back, actually. I'm pretty psyched about it.

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.