Quotes About Storytelling

Language is never a problem when you have the screenplay ready.

My father was a screenwriter, and I kind of grew up in that world.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

Screenwriting is about condensing.

I've made up little mantras for myself, catchphrases from a screenwriting book that doesn't exist. One is 'Write the movie you'd pay to go see.' Another is 'Never let a character tell me something that the camera can show me.'

It doesn't help anybody to put out a bad script.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

I want to do Indian films based on scripts with a universal appeal.

I don't look at scripts in terms of commerciality. I just look at the part, the people involved.

Good scripts are hard to find.

There are no great scripts - just great films.

I find that most of my scripts have a lot more scenes than most films, so the average movie might have 100 scenes, my average script has 300 scenes.

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

Films work due to scripts, characters, and what you see on screen.

Writing is the life blood of everything in Hollywood. Without writers, there are no scripts, no acting work.

There aren't enough good scripts.

My heart truly lies in good scripts.

Film scripts are more important for me than the language of the film.

On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order.

I grew up watching 'Magnum, P.I.' and shows like that, where you could develop a character over eight seasons, with stories along the way.

What I learned most was how to tell a story in 15 seconds or 30 seconds or 60 seconds - to have some kind of goal of what to try to do and make it happen in that time.

When I sit down to write, I know everything I need to know... I start writing, and within 30 seconds or 60 seconds, I'm watching a movie. I'm not making this stuff up; the characters are acting it out,and I'm just writing it down.

'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.

When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it's not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.