Screenplays Quotes - Page 7

• Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.

  Kelly Jones

  Song, Stuff, Easier

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• L.A.: where there's never weather, and walking is a crime. L.A.: where the streetlights and palm trees go on forever, where darkness never comes, like a deal that never goes down, a meeting that's never taken. The City of Angels: where every cockroach has a screenplay and even the winos wear roller skates. It's that kind of town.

  Ian Shoales

  Taken, Angel, Cities

  Ian Shoales (1985). “I gotta go: the commentary of Ian Shoales”, Perigee

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• I've wanted to make a film about French youth since I went to Cannes with my first film 'Kids' in 1995 ... Scribe's screenplay is about French kids today, and the world today. Just like my films 'Kids' and 'Ken Park', this will be a movie like you have never seen before.

  Larry Clark

  Kids, World, Today

  FaceBook post by Larry Clark from Jul 19, 2013

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• Writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain. When you’re climbing, all you can see is the rock in front of you and the rock directly above you. You can’t see where you’ve come from or where you’re going.

  Syd Field

  Writing, Rocks, Climbing

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• Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy.

  Mickey Rourke

  Writing, Guy, Matter

  The Tavis Smiley Show, www.pbs.org. November 10, 2011.

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• Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.

  Joe Shuster

  Technique, Stories, Scripts

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• I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

  John Sayles

  Writing, Character, Knowing

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• I've quit writing screenplay [adaptations]. It's too much work. I don't look at writing a novel as work, because I only have to please myself. I have a good time sitting here by myself, thinking up situations and characters, getting them to talk - it's so satisfying. But screenwriting's different. You might think you're writing for yourself, but there are too many other people to please.

  Elmore Leonard

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• . . I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last. In my experience, they want no real representations of homosexuality, they want no complexity, they are terrified of ambiguity and unanswered questions - they don't know what they want, except that they want to make lots of money. The only freedom I've ever had as an artist has been in the theatre.

  Craig Lucas

  Couple, Real, Artist

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• The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

  Salman Rushdie

  Running, Writing, Eye

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• I've come to view screenwriting assignments as playwriting grants, because they provide a considerable financial cushion. However, they can also be extremely time-consuming. Film projects tend to drag on and on, which takes me away from the theatre, and then they don't get made. At the same time, the screenplays that have come my way have been quite challenging, for the most part, and even enjoyable.

  Donald Margulies

  Views, Challenges, Theatre

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• Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.

  Gene Hackman

  Fun, Pages, Scripts

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• This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.

  Robert B. Parker

  Writing, Twenties, Suggestions

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• I wrote one terrible manuscript after another for a decade and I guess they gradually got a little less terrible. But there were many, many unpublished short stories, abandoned screenplays and novels... a Library of Congress worth of awful literature.

  Seth Grahame-Smith

  Library, Stories, Literature

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• I'm developing some screenplays at the moment with my Australian producer.

  Rachel Griffiths

  Moments, Producers, Developing

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I have always credited the writer of the original material above the title: Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Bram Stoker's Dracula, or John Grisham's The Rainmaker. I felt that I didn't have the right to Francis Coppola's anything unless I had written the story and the screenplay.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Directors, Titles, Stories

  Buography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Scripts are what matter. If you get the foundations right and then you get the right ingredients on top, you stand a shot... but if you get those foundations wrong, then you absolutely don't stand a shot. It's very rare-almost never-that a good film gets made from a bad screenplay.

  Tim Bevan

  What Matters, Foundation, Directors

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• My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.

  Michael Arndt

  Mediocre

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• If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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

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• Those writers that have zero say in their movie adaptations have zero say because they sell it. If you don't sell it, and you do it yourself, and you wait until the screenplay is ready, you don't have to worry about that.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Zero, Worry, Waiting

  "Stephen Chbosky talks “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, Blu-ray extras, and his favorite teen films". Interview with Scott Neumyer, www.ifc.com. February 13, 2012.

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• I definitely want to do more movies, and I'm also a writer, so I have a few screenplays that I'm working on, one of them based off my one-woman show that I used to do in New York. Two of the screenplays I've written by myself, and then I'm also working on one with my writing partner, Tom Riley, who's in London.

  Eliza Coupe

  New York, Writing, Two

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

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• Y Tu Mama Tambien' is one of the first unrated movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. But many video stores won't take a movie that's not rated, so I had to make the movie an R.

  Alfonso Cuaron

  Awards, Video, Firsts

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• For me, when working on a film or play or television show, everything for me starts with the screenplay and I am devoted to that and that is what I work from. Any research I do or any preparation I do on my own is all ultimately in service of that.

  James Spader

  Play, Preparation, Research

  "Q&A: James Spader repeats history in 'Lincoln'". Interview with Amanda Meyncke, www.mtv.com. November 23, 2012.

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• Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy.

  Chris Colfer

  Writing, Long, Cameras

  "Glee’s Chris Colfer". Interview with Amanda Sims, www.timeout.com. July 17, 2012.

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• I sold my first screenplay six months before 'Glee,' but they had the option for a year and now it's back with me.

  Dianna Agron

  Years, Six, Glee

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