Quotes About Screenwriting

I had always been interested in screenwriting, ever since I could write things down as a child. Obviously, I started as an actor, professionally, but screenwriting was always something that I had a great interest in.

Big feature films are another world.

I feel that one of the fields that I need to learn a lot is screenwriting. I used to write my own screenplays, but it's just that I remember that at that time, I was saying to myself, 'I wish one day I will meet a screenwriter that will help me because I feel that I need to learn.'

A lot of times, when mother-son or mother-daughter relationships have been put on screen, they tend to trickle towards ugly, and I don't find that totally realistic for the wide swath of us, and it's also not that fun to watch.

I tend to jot down moments, lines, interactions that don't really make any sense. I try and explain these scattered notes to my close friends, and they become more and more logical. I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve.

I think in the 'Deadpool' franchise, the writers are really good at distilling the good stuff and applying that to the material in this universe.

Over the years, if you look at the films of people like Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, their supporting characters, even if it's a doorman with two lines, always seem three-dimensional. To me, that's a sign of good storytelling.

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.

You'd have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story, but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don't make movies; we do.

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

I've always approached screenplays and so forth with, "How would it really happen?" Not "What's the movie version?" but "What's the real-life version?" Then I just follow my nose.

I remember watching Quentin Tarantino accept an Academy Award for screenwriting for 'Pulp Fiction.' If I'd known then that 15 years later one of his movies would again be nominated for an Oscar and I'd be in it - that would be pretty crazy.

As a screenwriter and a half-Jew, I tend to look at the glass half-empty.

The writing in those HBO dramas, like 'The Wire,' is as good as anything I've seen.

I'm very lucky. I actually like screenwriting. I rarely feel a sense of doom going to my desk.

I have been writing since 11th grade, and have a few features that have almost gotten off the ground. I really want one of my features to come to life.

Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began writing books.

My mom's a screenwriter, and before that, she was an actress, and my father was an actor; my stepfather was a director, so I was on sets a lot as a kid. I loved the magic of the set. You walk in, and it's a living room, and you walk outside, and it's just a piece of wood held up by another piece of wood.

I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school - and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my first short in college - which was called 'Extras' - I lost thousands of dollars and made an unsatisfying and incomplete film.

The history of screenwriting - of what we do - is more than 100 years old. It's thousands of years old, going back to Sophocles and Euripedes. I believe the only - the only - separation for being a dramatist is reading drama.

It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.

Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.

'Hardware' came about because I had written quite a few scripts and hadn't had any luck getting them made.

Harmony Korine, the screenwriter, was really into my early work. I did a lot of stuff under the name Sentridoh and a lot of 4-track cassette stuff that he was into.