I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
I'm taken by a story and a character. I'll read a script, and if it touches me and moves me and makes waves, that's why I'll choose it.
In terms of directing a feature, I'd want the story to be right - you know, it's a year of your life, and you have to be focused on one thing, so I want it to be a story that I really, really care about and will enjoy making.
Independent films are very hard to get made, but I'm lucky enough to get them made, so I'm going to keep doing it. I like my independence. I like being able to tell a story the way I want to tell a story. I don't like developing it with a team. I like coming to a story and deciding whether I want to do it or not.
Great deeds give choice of many tales. Choose a slight tale, enrich it large, and then let wise men listen.
Any direct experience that I have with indigenous peoples and their plights may feed into the nature of the story I choose to tell. In fact, it almost certainly will.
Success is freedom - scripts coming your way and getting to choose the stories you want to tell.
I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end.
I've wanted to direct for a long time, but it had to be a story I wanted to tell. The writer's job is to find the story that he should tell.
My key interest in choosing scripts is character-driven stories, because there are so many stories that sacrifice character for plot.
Film-makers must decide what story to tell and how to tell it.
It was very important to me to choose a director like Gary [Ross], whose instincts come from character, who's a storyteller, and who puts characters first.
In a sea of stories, find the right one to tell, and the right way to tell it.
I wouldn't do a project if it weren't a story I wanted to tell. That's rewarding in itself, as a writer, if you're working on a story that you enjoy telling.
You don’t choose a story, it chooses you.
One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.
So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me.
I tell people the first time I decided to write a novel I was in my mid-20s, and it was, 'Well, it's time to see if I can do this.' I basically flipped a coin to see if I was going to write science fiction or if I was going to do a crime novel. The coin toss went to science fiction.
A big producer offered me the part of the pretty girl that waits at home for the guy, and I couldn't do it. That's not a story I ever want to tell.
I came on board 'Clown' because it was a very simple story, and it was a very nice script and a very refreshing take on a kind of The Brothers Grimm fable, you know?
I make different choices in regards to the stories I want to be a part of. In my mind, it's a totally different medium. Commercials are little skits, and movies are stories; I became a little more picky in my choices for stories that I wanted to be involved in.
I think at a certain point actors need to start taking responsibility for the kinds of stories they want to tell.
It's probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.
