Scripts Quotes - Page 2

• You define your own life. Don't let other people write your script.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Writing, Positivity, People

  FaceBook post by Oprah Winfrey from Sep 07, 2011

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• I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

  Steve Martin

  Writing, Fire, Play

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• I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.

  Preston Sturges

  Night, Ukulele, Directors

  Preston Sturges, Sandy Sturges (1991). “Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words”, p.294, Simon and Schuster

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• When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write...

  Ang Lee

  Writing

  "Ang Lee and James Schamus". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2000.

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• When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We'd just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I've got $26 left.

  Ang Lee

  Son, Trying, Diapers

  "Ang Lee and James Schamus". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2000.

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• If God is the author of life, there must be a script.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Life, God, Religious

  FaceBook post by Ravi Zacharias from Jul 07, 2013

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• I wanted to put a reference to masturbation in one of the scripts for the Sandman. It was immediately cut by the editor [Karen Berger]. She told me, "There's no masturbation in the DC Universe." To which my reaction was, "Well, that explains a lot about the DC Universe."

  Neil Gaiman

  Cutting, Editors, Sandman

  "The Sandman Companion". Book by Hy Bender, 1999.

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• The secret of making movies is having the strongest possible script.

  Harvey Weinstein

  Secret, Strongest

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

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• The most important thing is the story. Not the script, but the story.

  Richard D. Zanuck

  Important, Stories, Important Things

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• I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

  Alexander Payne

  Mistake, Thinking, Ideas

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• I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Giving, Flags, Done

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• The reason I turn down 99% of a hundred, I mean a thousand, scripts is because romantic comedies are often very romantic but seldom very funny.

  Hugh Grant

  Mean Girls, Romantic, Comedy

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• If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you're turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.

  Clive Owen

  Book, Different, Stories

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• When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Motivational, Character, Salary

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• Most aspiring screenwriters simply don't spend enough time choosing their concept. It's by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months - sometimes years - are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie.

  Terry Rossio

  Mistake, Race, Years

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• You can't fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.

  Howard Hawks

  Moving, Directors, Shooting

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• Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

  Bette Davis

  Acting, Bigger Than Life, Should

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

  Tony Scott

  Romance, True Romance, Desks

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• It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.

  David Duchovny

  Pages, Knows, Hard

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• To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?

  Chinua Achebe

  Drama, Book, Writing

  Chinua Achebe (2012). “Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays”, p.83, Anchor

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• When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he's going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there's one guy: the director. It's different in television.

  Holt McCallany

  Character, Ideas, Guy

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin.

  Tim Roth

  Movie, Dog, Fiction

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• Here's what I didn't know when I was starting out that I now know…I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn't broken in yet, you hadn't really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn't get easier because you wrote one before…each one gets harder by a factor of 10.

  Shane Black

  Writing, Broken, Starting Out

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• You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

  Steven Spielberg

  Attitude, Thinking, Shooting

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• Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.

  Stephen Covey

  Freedom, Independent, Giving

  Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill (1995). “First Things First”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

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