Script Integrity Quotes

I'm not an ad-libber. If I'm asked to ad-lib, I can ad-lib forever and it's really fun to do that, but I find that well-written scripts are put together very carefully. Once you start to ad-lib and add words to sentences, there's a slacking that happens. When it's good writing, it's taut. I'm not judging people who do ad-lib.

I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, 'I'm rewriting this now.' I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.

When you sign up to a film, you sign up to everything that's in the script. I really believe in that.

I know firsthand how much work has usually gone into a screenplay, so if there's something that rings false or a line that I would think would need a tweak or something, I will think long and hard before I even recommend changing it. In that sense, I'm very faithful to the scripts that I get - if they're good scripts.

Secure writers don't sell first drafts. They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready, as actor-ready as possible. Unfinished work invites tampering, while polished, mature work seals its integrity.

Aaron Sorkin very sticky about using precise language. It's in his contract: you have to use what he writes!

Samuel Beckett's estate will not license productions of his plays that are not performed as written.

I had creative control over my character, which means if they wanted me to do something that I didn't agree with, then I wouldn't do it. If it was good for the show, then I had no problem. If it was demeaning to the character and wasn't adding a positive light to the show, then I can guarantee that I wouldn't do it.

I think it is best that if you are the writer you just leave the director to it. With the caveat that you state, 'Be gentle with the script. And if there are changes, consult me.'

I think there's so many little specific things in the script [of "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"]. And the script was also structured so beautifully that I didn't want to mess with it.

If you steal other people's characters, it doesn't work with the context of the scripts and what is written, so I wanted to make her my own. I was petrified, in the beginning, because it's such an iconic character, especially being a young lady myself.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

When I was working on 'Big Fan,' I didn't really feel like any lines needed to be changed or enhanced or expanded upon in any way. I thought it was a solid script. All you had to do was what it said.

When people slave over those scripts and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, they don't usually want you to add farts.

'Justified' had such dead-on beautiful scripts that you didn't want to mess with it.

My biggest thing is telling a truthful story, something that is rooted in something and is very honest. If I read a script and you want me to take off my top, and it doesn't serve a purpose, then I'm not going to do it.

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

I always feel this huge responsibility to the script when it arrives, keeping it confidential.