Quotes About Screenplay

What I play on screen doesn't bother me.

Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.

There is such a thing as my kind of actor, and how well they pull off my dialogue is a very, very important part of it.

I'm just a sucker for a good script.

I am greatly impressed with the BBC's TV adaption of Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House.' The costumes, the sets, the acting and the screenplay are all superb. Every episode is riveting.

If you do well as an actor, a good director will pick up on it, and keep it in the film.

I've been really picky about the sort of characters that I want to represent.

In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work of fifty lines.

My mother always helped me because she was kind of a research fanatic. When she would write a screenplay, there would be so much research all over the walls. And so when I started working as an actress, I would do the same thing. She instilled in me a love of taking everything very seriously. It didn't matter what it was.

You're torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that's really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don't understand the process?

I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, 'Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.' It would seem like it was a hometown boy just wanting to be home.

I've chosen all my films very carefully. I know that I've had better parts in some films than in others. But the films I do are the ones I want to see when I read the screenplays. I guess you can basically say that I've just done things I loved when I read them.

Tommy Lee Jones

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

I always say when you write a book, you're a 'one-man band.' Whereas, when you finish a screenplay, it's just a sketch.

What is a screenplay? 120 pages of begging for money and attention.

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.

I had a bad experience on Ned Kelly, which I'd written the screenplay for. I thought: "Well Jesus, if these are the type of people directing movies I might as well direct one myself!"

Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.

Browning cut, trimmed, ignored and generally sabotaged the screenplay's visual potentials, insisting on static camera setups, eliminating reaction shots and special effects, and generally taking the lazy way out at every opportunity.

I always pick what I consider to be good scripts.

All of the good movies are based on how that story was told. And you cannot do it with a bad script, that's for sure, no matter who.

If you're writing a screenplay, you need to be prepared to let go: there's a good chance the words you write aren't going to be the ones that end up on screen.

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.