Script Revision Quotes

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage.

I must have written 15 lyrics for 'The Lion King,' and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn't work, or else the characters changed.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

I don't do any editing while we're making the movie. I sit down and watch it all with my editor, we make longhand notes on pads, and then we begin our work.

If my film fails, I never think it was because the script was weak.

When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.

My scripts are always heavily noted. If I can take a director to one side and say, "Do you mind if we try this?," a few days before, that's usually a better way of doing it then on the day.

Unfortunately scripts don't chase me. I chase them. I struggle, battle, discard, pick it back, struggle further, plead with it, curse it, cajole and try to be clever. But it is invariably the script that rules.

When I write a script, I have all the old versions of the script on my laptop. They're saved as backups in case something goes horribly wrong.

The first draft of 'Ex Machina' is extremely different than the finished film. That would be like 10% of the original draft stayed into the shooting script.

These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.

I don't remember what script it was, but at the Monday table read, the [opening] teaser didn't work.We went back and had to think of a new teaser, and [after] four hours, five hours, we weren't landing on anything.And it was probably Glen [Charles] who said, "What are we, cowards?" You had to do it, no matter how long it took.

We all have great faith in the writing team that puts together 'Heroes.'

Personally, I read a lot of scripts.

Inside me, 'Dragon Ball' became a thing of the past, but later, I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. I guess, at some point, it became a work that I like so much that I can't leave it alone.

I have always wanted to be more interested in scripts.

I was hired to do this one great script called 'Cap'n Ricky' and that project is up in the air at the moment.

You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done.

The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.

The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.

It's much harder to act poorly written material. It's much harder to memorize poorly written material.

Like, every couple of months you read, they rewrite, you come back in, they've animated more stuff - they usually videotape you while you're reading it - so they'll incorporate some gestures and some facial expressions into it.

Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.

I wrote a script, and I gave it to a guy who reads scripts, and he read it, and he liked it, but he said he thinks I ought to re-write it. I said, "Fuck that - I'll just make a copy!"