A Quote by Ben Cross
I read a lot of scripts, so I know by page 25 if I like it or not.
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I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology.
I read a ton of scripts. I read a lot of scripts, and you read one, and first of all, you felt like you read it in 14 minutes, because you're turning the pages so fast you can't wait to see what's going to happen.
A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
Just besides how smart Aaron Sorkin stuff is, really, is how visceral it is, how sensual it is. Not sexual, sensual. Always tactile. When you read his scripts, the scripts read fast and the words almost jump off the page.
I feel like a lot of the films I do, part of the reason I like doing them is I'm not 100 percent sure what it's going to be. It's exciting. I read an equal amount of very generic scripts, and you kind of know exactly what those are and that doesn't whet my appetite. I already know what it is or I already know what the character is. It's just a lot harder to get interested.
It's hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.
The test for me, when I read other people's scripts, is whether I feel like there's something about me that is the best person to tell this story. I have a pretty high bar for myself. There's a lot of scripts that I read and think, "Oh, this is great, but I think there are 50 other directors who could bring this to the cinema."
I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact.
I read a lot of scripts. I believe you've got to read one that you know you're not going to do, because you've got to educate yourself on what's out there to make the best decision for you.
You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.
Sometimes I watch films that I can't believe got made. Especially because I read scripts that are truly incredible, that will never get made. I don't know who is behind those decisions. It's like you just have to doodle something on a page about the underdog who finally gets the girl and the film gets made.
I enjoy working with writers and their scripts. It's very exciting to me. Eventually I would like to produce, direct and act onstage, but it's not a heavy pressure. When I do it, I want to do it well. I'm just educating myself with writers and scripts, because I didn't read a lot of books when I was growing up.
I feel guilty if I'm not reading books, but I read scripts of movies or things that I know I'm committed to that I'm going to do the project. I tell myself, "I'm going to read this script like six times," and I only read it the initial time.
It was probably 10 at night when I started to read Donnie Darko. I get in bed and read the first page, and I go, "Hmmm. That's interesting." Second page, "Wow." By the fourth page, my heart started to beat, and I knew. It makes me cry, because I knew I had found a classic film. You just know when you get certain material.
The one thing you know when you're shooting a script - and I've been on a lot of sets - is space is in a script, and the distance between the page and the stage is so enormous that it is unbelievable how even the brightest people can misread your intent or not see it altogether. Scripts have air in them. Scripts are supposed to leave things up to interpretation, but people can misread things enormously, so sometimes it's just a matter of wanting to put on the screen what you had in mind.
When I write my scripts, there's a point at which if I'm not starting to see them visually, I feel like I'm kind of cheating. So my scripts are laden with a lot of visual description, which makes them not so much fun to read - I kind of weigh them down.
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