Quotes About Storytelling

The one thing we pride ourselves on the most with writing 'Car Share' is that it's hard to predict what's going to happen and that's hard to achieve, especially with comedy.

The only thing that gets me back to directing is good scripts.

The movies I like to make are very rich and full of passion. Some people see me as an action director, but action is not the only thing in my movies. I always like to show human nature - something deep inside the heart.

Reason is a fine thing, but it is not the only thing available to a writer. It's just part of the arsenal of many things available to a storyteller. Revelation, for example.

The problem with a lot of narrative films is that they're not real enough.

The power that you have as a storyteller is to be able to tell stories that are at once entertaining but also never lose sight of what's going on in the real world.

All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.

Each time I'm starting to work on a film, even if I love to settle the plot in the real world, I start to think about the plot as a fairy tale, or a dream, or a nightmare... As if it was the best way to tell the truth about characters or narration, instead of realism.

The benefit of having a story that takes place in the real world is that you don't have to invent the real world. It exists.

I have two little black boys. And a film like 'Do the Right Thing' can help illuminate the times for them with great storytelling.

What I loved about romances was the character, and I think I still bring that to my novels. What romance taught me was that the 'who' will always matter more than the 'what.' It's fun to come up with plots, but I want to make sure the reader cares about who it's happening to.

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.

You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative.

I come from the theater, so I like it being: curtain up, this is what we want you to see, we have a reason for showing it to you, and then the curtain comes down, and that's it.

I think the experience of going to a theater and seeing a movie with a lot of people is still part of the transformational power of the film, and it's equivalent to the old shaman telling a story by the campfire to a bunch of people.

Directing plays lacked the immediacy and connection to real world events that journalism offered; journalism lacked the drama, theatricality and subjective storytelling of theater. It wasn't until I had the idea of making a documentary film about the 1992 presidential campaign that these two passions came together in 'The War Room.'

Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.

Theater is just so much more satisfying than film or television just because you deliver the whole thing from start to finish in one evening, and you can tell if people have enjoyed it or not. That's great to do every night to go in front of a full room of people and tell the story. There's nothing like that really.

Dramas for me are where it's at, but a great drama, a great character-driven drama, there's very few of them that get made; there's very few of them that actually make it to theaters. There's just very few of them.

If I listen to 120 stories, I'd love 10 of them, seven would go on floors, four would get completed, three films will have the first copy ready, and one will release in theaters. This is how it has been for me.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

I think theatre to some extent is always about telling stories, isn't it, and I think what I've learned is that freedom comes when you tell your story; freedom comes when you tell the truth.

What I'm trying to do is find either existing properties or come up with properties or angles or stories which will create music drama. It's my obsession and most of all I would like to remain working in theatre. I think it's very much alive.

When people leave the theatre, they should remember a line, a character, a sequence or emotion. With entertainment, I want to give meaningful cinema.