William Monahan Quotes - Page 2

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• The era I love most is the Federal period, just after the Revolution and the formation of the United States. The birth of America as a nation coincided with the Romantic era and I've always been thoroughly into the Romantics and I've always been thoroughly into America, particularly at the time when it was a brand new idea, when it was something brand new in the world. It was a very exciting time in the world because of the birth of America

  William Monahan

  Ideas, America, United States

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I was particularly anxious that I shoot the tires out of the class system. All it is these days is a hobby of certain masochists, and certain sadists.

  William Monahan

  Class, Hobbies, Tire

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I learned from Ridley [Scott] how to come out of the trailer at a fast walk and make your decisions and keep it going. We were very much on time and under budget, as they say. That was a very important thing for me and very satisfactory.

  William Monahan

  Decision, Important, Walks

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I had a guy at the Groucho bar clawing at my arm nearly in tears saying that until he saw The Departed he thought Americans were the ones on TV. I didn't know you had accents. I didn't know you had a class system. I didn't know you were like us. To which the answer is, probably only where I grew up, but while we're at it don't watch television and think it's the United States of America.

  William Monahan

  Thinking, Class, America

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• As far as executing work is concerned, you do it all in order. You do it in contractual order. There's no overlap, it's just continuation of your ordinary work. You move from one project into another.

  William Monahan

  Moving, Order, Ordinary

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• You're not turning the picture over to a system or a process, you are the process, and the most important thing is to have things exactly as you want them.

  William Monahan

  Important, Want, Process

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I hate doing anything in offices. I either want to be out in the world or in my own environment - and it should be your own environment that you work in.

  William Monahan

  Hate, Office, World

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Martin [Campbell] is very energetic and precise. He'll on the set like four hours early with a flashlight and I thought, well, I'll certainly try to be very neat about my script like Martin, which I wasn't, but I'm not going to do that bit with the 4AM and the flashlight. I'd love to be able to say I was nervous, but I wasn't. The only time I ever had anxiety it turned out to be asthma.

  William Monahan

  Anxiety, Trying, Four

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• I'm a guy whose first motion picture experience was seeing Ridley Scott glide past on a camera on a hundred and fifty million dollar film, and prep two movies, and there is no way to overstate that when you've worked with Ridley, it's like having been a quarterdeck lieutenant to Lord Nelson.

  William Monahan

  Past, Two, Guy

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• There's only one way to prep, so far as I know. You have your script, you hire the people you want, you find your locations and your setups, everybody shows up and you shoot the film.

  William Monahan

  People, Want, Way

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• For some reason, I seem to work well with actors. I love working with them.

  William Monahan

  Actors, Reason, Wells

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.

  William Monahan

  Ideas, Directors, Working It

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not a precious text protector, or anything like that, you know, because it's a much more vital form than that. You have to rock.

  William Monahan

  Rocks, Form, Knows

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you change a location opportunistically, to gain a day on the schedule, which I did more than once, you have to re-rig everything creatively on the spot, and you not only have to be able to do that, but do it with great fluency to keep moving. I used to go apeshit when anything got changed in a film but you live and learn, and I have learned.

  William Monahan

  Moving, Schedules, Able

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• When I started writing screenplays, as early as I started writing anything, I hadn't seen any ordinary screenplays. I saw movies and figured out how I thought they should be written.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Ordinary, Saws

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm more from a double world where I wasn't part of anything or invested in anything, because I was Irish, and very Irish, but also the other part of my family, not that it had airs, or money, was descended from the first minister on Cape Ann in the 1620s.

  William Monahan

  Air, Capes, World

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency.

  William Monahan

  Stuff, Way, Fluency

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.

  William Monahan

  Directors, Film, Ends

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Firsts, Odd

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I never viewed screen drama as a vulgar form, or a lesser one, and I've never written it left-handed.

  William Monahan

  Drama, Form, Vulgar

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you decide to do Hamlet in a funny hat staged in a ruined factory, it doesn't make you Shakespeare.

  William Monahan

  Hats, Factories, Ruined

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry.

  William Monahan

  Thinking, Stuff, Scripts

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Novelists, Bigger

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Thinking, Long

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

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