Quotes About Narrative

The only thing I wish was happening more was that there were more Indian characters. Like the movies with leads that are Indian and they talk about Indian culture versus Americanized Indians.

I think audiences are really savvy and know when we're doing stuff to just shock them versus do stuff that really drives the story.

The expected vertical line of Ikiru's narrative breaks when Kurosawa does a flash-forward in the middle of the film.

We think of stories a lot of the time as being horizontal texts, beginning to end. But I love the idea of having little vertical spikes in the story, too.

If you read the whole Vertigo 'Animal Man' series of 89 issues or whatever, each writer has a completely different take on his origin. If you try to put them all together, they contradict one another. I had to pick and choose to make up a new origin that makes sense to new readers.

We hate it when movies, right off the bat, tell you who this character is, where they're from, why they are the way they are. Even 'Vertigo,' one of the greatest movies ever made, starts off by explaining why Jimmy Stewart has this fear of heights.

Money is the probably the most successful story ever told. It has no objective value... but then you have these master storytellers: the big bankers, the finance ministers... and they come, and they tell a very convincing story.

Music was the only voice of cinema for a very long time before we had sound; it's organically linked to cinema itself.

For a very long time now, we've seen things one way, which is through the eyes of men. Quite frankly, I'm a little bit bored by our stories and the way we perceive things.

If I hear a story or a fact about somebody I don't know and have never met, it's like getting a hollow vessel that you can fill up with whatever you want. That's more tempting to me than to try to replicate what I actually know.

In the U.S., highly selective renditions of its history have served in practice to impose blinkers on some of its citizens and catered to vested interests.

Often, I'll read a script and the female character's an extension or serves some sort of purpose in terms of the male character's narrative and it just isn't fully formed. But they will be very beautiful. Whether a secretary or a doctor or a vet, they will be very beautiful.

The simple truth is that every veteran has his or her own unique story, and there's no single narrative about the issue of veterans finding civilian employment. And no single solution.

You can get away with making some extremely bold statements by Trojan Horsing them into a narrative via comedy.

I don't think that a film should be known as 'male-centric' or 'female-centric,' but it should be known for the story. That would be really nice, and viable, too.

Online theft has changed the business model of filmmaking because the DVD market is very soft. So, more ambitious, compelling, character-driven narrative of a certain budget level isn't really a viable business model in the eyes of the studios right now.

I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page.

Iowa is speckled with vibrant communities like Wilton, each with its own character and its own story to tell.

I don't have a favorite genre. I love to work and live vicariously through every character. It's all about trying to bring the character to life and get the story across in a way that resonates with the audience. It's always interesting and challenging in a gratifying and unique way.

I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vice versa.

I became a war hero before going on to critical acclaim as a professional victim.

When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it's your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.

As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator.

The argument for '12 Years a Slave' was that - yes, it's a beautiful film. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted. It's a real story, and these stories should be told. The problem is, if they're the only stories being told, then it makes Americans of African descent - it puts them into that victim category. And that was my problem with the movie.