You can have an amazing director and terrible script, and the film's not going to be great. But if you have the most incredible script and an okay director, you could still get a really good film.
The script was always the most important thing to me and I loved the script. For one thing, I've always admired trees. I just worship them. Think what trees have witnessed, what history, such as living through the Civil War, yet they still survive.
The script is so important... Even if you have a huge entourage or big lighting trucks, the most important thing is the space between the actor and the camera.
I always knew the script was important, but I didn't realize how important until you get out there and just deal with the issues of putting a movie together. It's amazing that anything works, to be totally honest.
'Analyze This' is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing. I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense.
The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face.
The script is so key to making a good movie. But everything is against you when you're making a movie: the logistics of putting a crew out where you need to go, whether the light is fading; if the weather's not right, something's wrong.
The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.
The experience of shooting a film is about the script, the captain of the ship who is the director, and the way they push their actors and teams to give their best. It's not about the language and the region.
It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script.
Picking projects, it's always director first and then script. Those two things are pretty much head-to-head.
My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel...
American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.
A lot of times, the script is the thing they care about least.
Analyze This is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing.
What I learned is that I should probably read a screenplay every once in a while before I said 'yes'. You could make bad film out of a good script, but you're never going to make a good film out of a bad script.
To find a good script is very important, because the chances and opportunities I would be getting will be very far and few.
Give me a good script, and I'll be a hundred times better as a director.
I'm a big believer that the script is your bible.
It's not that we go around the set thinking, 'Oh, today we are going to kiss, so let's enjoy'. It's not that. It's acting. If it's important for the script, so be it.
It's eighty percent script and twenty percent you get great actors. There's nothing else to it.
Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a shot... but if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don't stand a shot. It's very rare-almost never-that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay.
I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script.
I definitely have to know every detail of a script and analyse its potential before I think further because if the director is the captain, then the script is the ship.
Acting in particular is a fun job when you have a good script. I don't know about acting when you don't have a great script. I'm gonna say that's not a great job, it's kind of a dumb job. But when you have a good part in a good script, it's the best job, in a way.
