Screenwriters Quotes - Page 5

• My parents were screenwriters, and they had four daughters and we all write. So that's amazing. Talk about powerful parents. My mother always said to us, "Everything is copy."

  Nora Ephron

  Mother, Daughter, Powerful

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• 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

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• 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

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• The two explorers are given fictional names. But as in real life, they travel to the Amazon roughly a generation apart, in the early-to-mid 20th century. In the film, they're both guided by Karamakate, as a young man early in the story and later as an old shaman. He and the outsiders share a desire for knowledge - self knowledge and an understanding of the world around them, says the film's co-screenwriter, Jacques Toulemonde.

  Tom Cole

  Real, Men, Self

  "'Serpent' Film Explores, Revives Lost Cultural Knowledge For Colombians". "Weekend Edition Sunday" with Tom Cole, www.npr.org. February 21, 2016.

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• Fiction and screenwriting blend for me. I feel like being a TV writer/screenwriter has definitely made my fiction writing better, although I have less time to do it.

  Nick Antosca

  Writing, Fiction, Tvs

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director.

  Hirokazu Koreeda

  Morning, Memories, Class

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Graphic novels and comic books offer an easy foothold into that world, and screenwriters and studio execs gravitate toward those, because I think they can see it all right there. It's like, "Here's what the movie looks like."

  Ryan Reynolds

  Book, Thinking, Looks

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• We always for better or worse try to put on paper what's going up on screen - whether we're directing it or not. It's really just an extension of that habit which is trying to tell the reader what the movie will look like. Ultimately that is the job of a screenwriter to a certain extent.

  John Francis Daley

  Jobs, Trying, Looks

  Source: collider.com

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• The great thing, as a screenwriter, is that you are always proud of what ends up on the screen, you are able to create something in isolation and you have a lot of freedom.

  Jamie Linden

  Proud, Able, Isolation

  Source: collider.com

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• When you're a screenwriter, it's like being a mechanic. You open the hood of the story, the director is the driver, and he says, "What do you think? It's a little tough."

  Thomas Bidegain

  Thinking, Directors, Stories

  "Thomas Bidegain’s Solo Song". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. June 30, 2016.

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• Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is like being a eunuch at an orgy. Worse, actually, at least the eunuch is allowed to watch.

  Albert Brooks

  Hollywood, Watches, Eunuchs

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

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• Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

  Laura Hillenbrand

  Writing, Phones, Directors

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• I've had a real lucky time working in Hollywood. I've talked to other screenwriters, and they're all kind of beaten down and their spirits are crushed, because they work on these screenplays and these projects, and then directors either take them and change everything, rewrite them and make them worse, or they film them and they're nothing like how they imagined it to be.

  Daniel Clowes

  Real, Down And, Directors

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. March 30, 2012.

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• I'm an affluent screenwriter and all that - I'm a known screenwriter, but I'm not in the fraternity of the very, very major people. I would say a guy like Ernie Lehman, William Goldman, and a few others are quite a cut above.

  Rod Serling

  Cutting, People, Guy

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• The director Denis [Villeneuve] is actually an actor (he's from Sons of Anarchy and he's a great character actor) and he's also a screenwriter (he wrote What Lies Beneath). It blows my mind to see when people from one sector move to another and excel. I think Sicario was one of the best directed and written films. It did get [a nomination for best] cinematography, though.

  Bun B

  Lying, Moving, Character

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• And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.

  David Benioff

  Growing Up, Thinking, Goal

  "David Benioff" by Jason Bateman, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 30, 2008.

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• You get to Hollywood and you are in the land of big money where they don't like to see only one screenwriter's name. It's much better if you've got four or five.

  Nigel Kneale

  Land, Names, Hollywood

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• You are the executive director and screenwriter of your life.

  Eric Thomas

  Directors, Executives

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• But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

  Beth Henley

  Novelists, Poet, Copyright

  "Expressing "The Misery and Confusion Truthfully": An Interview with Beth Henley". "American Drama" Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2005.

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• When I was really young I didn't know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.

  John Sayles

  Stories, Young, Knows

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• Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

  Steven Bochco

  Communication, Understanding, Television

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• I was a novelist before I was a TV screenwriter. Actually, as a kid, I think I'd always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that I would be one.

  Ben Richards

  Kids, Thinking, Novelists

  "Ben Richards Exclusive Interview OUTCASTS". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. October 21, 2010.

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• If screenwriters have to kill off a female character, they love to give her cancer. We've seen so many great actresses go down to the Big C: Ali MacGraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Cancer, Character, Giving

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• From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

  Joe Eszterhas

  Team, Writing, Heart

  "I felt I had befouled myself" by Duncan Campbell, www.theguardian.com. January 30, 2004.

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• When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons.

  James Frey

  Reason, Mercenary

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