William Monahan Quotes

Quotes about:

• Dialogue is used to reveal not what we want to say, but what we are trying to hide.

  William Monahan

  Trying, Want, Used

  9 Copy quote

• The empirical is very important, but merit is inherent and not acquired. A university is massively important because you can see where you stand naturally in the ranks, and try yourself out, but education is just reading and understanding what you read.

  William Monahan

  Reading, Understanding, Trying

  Source: collider.com

  10 Copy quote

• Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.

  William Monahan

  People, Trying, Looks

  7 Copy quote

• I'd been working so hard making the film that I hadn't even emotionally processed the fact that I was a director.

  William Monahan

  Directors, Facts, Film

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I was young I was only thinking of writing, and whatever was going on was unreal and comparatively unimportant.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Thinking, Young

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• Star Wars was great at the beginning and crap at the end while Star Trek has always been interesting, and the difference is in the writing, and the thematic intentions.

  William Monahan

  Stars, War, Writing

  Source: collider.com

  9 Copy quote

• I'm a homebody, as many writers are, and need to be by myself, and I like to be by the Atlantic Ocean.

  William Monahan

  Ocean, Needs, Atlantic Ocean

  Source: collider.com

  7 Copy quote

• Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

  William Monahan

  Film, Blind, Committees

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• Out of all of the Star Trek movies, I happen to like the most recent one the best. I think it was the best one ever done.

  William Monahan

  Stars, Thinking, Done

  Source: collider.com

  6 Copy quote

• I don't think Roger Ebert has ever mentioned a screenplay. He assigns every auctorial move to the director, which makes some sense since the director has run a one-off game, but if Hamlet were written last year and had been only performed once as a film, and it didn't come off well on screen for whatever reason, it would be gone forever as a literary work, and never would have been considered as one.

  William Monahan

  Running, Moving, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• I don't move until an actor is happy, but it was very important to me as a so-called "first time director" to keep the machine moving. It was especially important to me to keep it moving and not be some kind of precious writer-director.

  William Monahan

  Moving, Important, Directors

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• The novel may be dead as a commercial form. When art forms things die as commercial forms, something happens to the practice of those arts that isn't very pleasant. It used to be that a poet like Tennyson could keep his house and his coach-and-four and his staff of six servants on the income from poetry. That doesn't happen anymore.

  William Monahan

  Art, Practice, House

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• London matters to me because it's the center of what I do for a living and has been since Tudor times.

  William Monahan

  Tudors, London, Matter

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I write drama in the English language. If I wasn't working in London I'd be doing something wrong.

  William Monahan

  Drama, Writing, London

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I've always been a bit repelled by "Sunset Boulevard", which is wrong about almost everything it touches, whether it's fame, Hollywood, screenwriters, or old ladies. Sunset Boulevard would only make sense to me if it was about John Gilbert and the pool boy.

  William Monahan

  Sunset, Boys, Hollywood

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted to do London Boulevard because I saw the potential of a story about two people who need each other desperately, who love at first sight, as one does, and above all a story in which no one is what they appear to be.

  William Monahan

  Sight, Two, People

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• London exists normally in a state of bleach bypass. There's the artistic context of "Blow Up" and "Performance" and all the Sixties and Seventies British films that I grew up on, because I did very much grow up on British films.

  William Monahan

  Growing Up, Blow, London

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.

  William Monahan

  Kids, Light, London

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Actors are players and if they're hot, or onto something, you let them go, or you and the actor can both get on to something. I always run out with lines as I think of them.

  William Monahan

  Running, Player, Thinking

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Because you're running an enterprise with two hundred-odd people, and it's really your responsibility to keep it moving quickly. So you have to know what you're doing, do it, and move on.

  William Monahan

  Running, Moving, Responsibility

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I shoot very little film. If you just do coverage you're shooting any number of potential films instead of just one, and I was shooting just one specific film. Film is cheap but time is expensive.

  William Monahan

  Numbers, Shooting, Littles

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I don't like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesn't get second-guessed you're looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, you're not. I've got an advanced degree in that lesson.

  William Monahan

  Years, Directors, Degrees

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Yeah, well I can't see a situation where I wouldn't at least re-write as a director something I was going to direct. At the moment, I wouldn't direct anything that I hadn't written. I can now say, as everybody else says, that it all depends on the script.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Directors, Scripts

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I'm shooting, as much as writing, I see edited footage in my mind, so I work that way, and it's economical.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Mind, Shooting

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I have a library room with four desks in it. On one of them is a spec, on one of them is a present work, on one of them is reading for a future work, on another desk is a novel I'm not doing until I'm a hundred and fifty, and things like that. But, contractually speaking, you just do one at a time when it's on and paid and live. You do your real day on one project and the rest is just literary life. Or intrusions.

  William Monahan

  Real, Reading, Library

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

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