Screenplays Quotes - Page 12

• Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

  Yahoo Serious

  Important, Film, Important Things

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I get all these screenplays that start 'Tawnya is in the shower. The water streams down her naked, perky breasts'. I don't think this is happening to Natalie Portman.

  Jessica Alba

  Thinking, Water, Hollywood

  "Fantasy figure" by Allison Glock, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2005.

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• The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.

  Barry Eisler

  Jobs, Essence, Different

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• I can't imagine any director directing a screenplay of mine, because the great directors all have very personal styles, and the ones that don't are not very interesting directors.

  Woody Allen

  Interesting, Style, Directors

  "Woody Allen by Moonlight". Interview with Uzoamaka Maduka, www.interviewmagazine.com. December 16, 2011.

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• A film is a living thing. The screenplay is a guideline. You really need to have a good, sound script to know that you have a dramatic structure that's going to work thematically, and to know how one scene will got through another, and to get a sense of character.

  Jose Padilha

  Character, Scripts, Sound

  Source: collider.com

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• To me, the screenplay only becomes the Bible of the film after the actors have been cast.

  Dito Montiel

  Actors, Film, Casts

  "Interview: Dito Montiel Talks Boulevard (Exclusive)". Interview with Karen Benardello, www.shockya.com. July 10, 2015.

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• The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.

  Ray Bradbury

  Mean, Years, Gears

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.

  Albert Brooks

  Tape, Used

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• Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Class, Play

  Raymond Chandler (1995). “Later Novels & Other Writings”

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• I can pick up a screenplay and flip through the pages.  If all I see is dialog, dialog, dialog, I won't even read it.  I don't care how good the dialog is - it's a moving picture.  It has to move all the time... It's not the stage.  A movie audience doesn't have the patience to sit and learn a lesson.  Their eyes need to be dazzled.  The writer is the most important element in the entire film because if it ain't on the page it ain't going to be on the screen.

  Robert Evans

  Moving, Eye, Important

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• A great screenplay is the most powerful bait in Hollywood.

  Sissy Spacek

  Powerful, Bait, Hollywood

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• What I learned is that I should probably read a screenplay every once in a while before I said 'yes'. You could make bad film out of a good script, but you're never going to make a good film out of a bad script.

  George Clooney

  Scripts, Film, Should

  "The Descendants - George Clooney interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• When I write a screenplay - and I think this is true for a lot of people - you direct the movie. Thats what writing a screenplay is.

  John Patrick Shanley

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. January 13, 2009.

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• I've learned to sell my music, I've learned to direct, I've written screenplays... All of this fulfilled my artistic needs but also put food on the table.

  Robby Benson

  Needs, Tables, Artistic

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• I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but for me, at least, there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.

  Michael Arndt

  Writing, Self Confidence, Way

  "Michael Arndt Discusses Toy Story 3". Interview with Brian Gallagher, movieweb.com. November 2, 2010.

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• I should probably bequeath the copyrights to my screenplay for Spies Like Us, just in case.

  Nathan Hale

  Spy, Should, Cases

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• I have completed and uncompleted screenplays, but they both fall into the category of “unsold.” I've seen quite a few movies where the screenplays seemed to be in the “uncompleted” category yet still got sold and made into movies, so I generally refer too all screenplays as “sold” or “unsold.” But that's just my own filing system.

  Gary Reilly

  Fall, Made, Categories

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• The number one metaphor I have in my mind for writing a screenplay is that...you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded. And the funny thing about that is, you think, 'Okay, that's hard because you're climbing up a rock face, and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know where the top is, you can't see what's below you...' But actually the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is just finding the mountain.

  Michael Arndt

  Writing, Thinking, Numbers

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• You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck.

  Gilda Radner

  Writing, Trying, Hollywood

  Gilda Radner (2015). “It's Always Something”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• I'd done table reads for my own screenplays, and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater, where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts, but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

  Jason Reitman

  Fun, Play, Directors

  "Jason Reitman’s ‘Live Read’ Series to Bring ‘The Apartment’ to New York This Month". artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com. April 03, 2012.

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• The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.

  Harold Ramis

  Animal, Opportunity, Giving

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• If I am a prolific writer and turn my hand, with what seems to some as indecent haste, from novels to screenplays to stage and radio plays, it is because there is so much to be said, so few of us to say it, and time runs out.

  Fay Weldon

  Running, Play, Hands

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• There have been 15 or 16 screenplays over the years, including one by me, but none of them has gotten made because Paramount is a huge studio. The Dice Man is an anti-establishment cult novel and you don't normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.

  Luke Rhinehart

  Dark, Men, Years

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• The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

  Clint Eastwood

  Horse, Drama, Book

  Interview with Michael Parkinson, www.theguardian.com. Ocober 6, 2003.

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• I don't assume, because I can write screenplays, that I know how to write a novel. It's a very different world. There's a craft involved in storytelling, and it's a different kind of craft. But yes, someday I will do that. It just might be awhile.

  Melissa Rosenberg

  Writing, Different, World

  "Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg Talks THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN – PART 1, EARTHSEED and NBC’s AFTERTHOUGHT". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. November 15, 2011.

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