Quotes About Screenplay

I choose films based on scripts.

You need good scripts to approach stars.

In general, I don't really think too much about pacing, myself. You kind of look at each script and what each script demands.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

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

I see a lot of scripts, and very few of them leap off the page at you.

It takes me two to three years to write a novel. A screenplay is 100 pages and takes five years.

It's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

I have scripts that I've only shown to animals... and they passed on them.

The movies are all about visual, and television is all about character and dialogue.

I try to write cinematically. Let me define what I mean by that. First of all, I try to write in a visual way so that the reader can watch a movie in their head. And it keeps moving. I try to structure the stories like a screenplay may be structured.

When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.

I like working with south Indian directors because they are very disciplined. They visualize their entire story and screenplay in their heads even before they start shooting, which I respect. They finish their work on time. Being a disciplinarian myself, this suits my style.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

Think about 'GoodFellas': It could be a textbook on how not to write a screenplay. It leans on voice-over at the beginning, then abandons it for a while, then the character just talks right into the camera at the end. That structure is so unusual that you don't have any sense of what's going to happen next.

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.

Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.

When you are working on a script, the story itself is not difficult. You say this would happen and then this, resulting perhaps in this. And the dialogue you make as true as you can.

In 'Expendables 2,' there was a lot of vulgar dialogue in the screenplay. For this reason, many young people wouldn't be able to watch this. But I don't play in movies like this. Due to that, I said, 'I won't be a part of that if the hardcore language is not erased.'

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.

A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.

I expect 'Paramasivan' to be a big hit because I have given the screenplay a fresh approach.

I'm a big movie guy.

When you act against a blue screen, you have to imagine what's not there.