A Quote by Brian Helgeland
I don't really write with living actors in mind. I guess I write for dead actors. I'll think of like, you know, Burt Lancaster would be good in this part, and so on. With 'L.A. Confidential,' it was like, 'Wouldn't it be cool if Dean Martin played the Kevin Spacey part?'
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I don't really write with actors in mind; I write with characters and then hope desperately that we can get good actors to play those parts.
Basically, I would like to be considered for roles that are well-written. I think that part of the problem that we've had as actors is that they insist on looking at us as Latino actors and not as actors, period.
When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.
When you're still, and some actors are really brilliant at that, you bring a kind of energy to you as opposed to sending the energy out. There are some actors, like Gary Cooper or Kevin Spacey, that are absolutely brilliant - Gene Hackman is another - at being and allowing the audience to just do the work.
You really have to get out of an actor's head to write because actors only care about their part and it revolves around their part so "This is the important part because this is the part where..." .
I like to write for actors I know and with whom I've worked before. You can write to their strengths and weaknesses and write roles that are better suited to them.
I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.
I've always written for actors, and if you want to write for good actors, you have to write parts that are surprising, that are human, and that allow them to go to a wide range of places.
In a sense, all actors are character actors, because we're all playing different characters. But a lot of the time - and I don't know, because I'm not a writer - but writers a lot of times write second- and third-tier characters better than they write primary characters. I guess they're more fun.
Actors are dumb when they get insecure of their co-stars. A lot of actors do. When there is a good actor, they're like, 'Oh, he's eating up the part.' That's stupid.
My dad traveled a lot, so I only usually saw him on weekends, growing up. His favorite actors in the world were Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. If Clint or Burt had a movie out, we would go to the movies. He didn't like movies, generally, unless Clint or Burt were in them.
We write and write and write until we think, 'If we have to shoot this script, we'll be happy, and it's going to be a great movie.' I meet with all the actors two weeks before, and I ask them, 'What lines don't work? What is uncomfortable for you? What jokes do you think aren't good? If you're not getting it, here's what the joke is.' You fix it.
I think my experience as an actor helps me to write anything. It certainly helped me to write 'August Osage County.' It helps me to write any play that I'm working on because I think one of the things I do well is write good roles for actors.
The actors I respect are the real character actors, who are the real chameleon actors that completely change from role to role. I love Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman. They tend to be British, I guess. People who really disappear and transform, I really like that.
I have tons of stuff that, you know, seems like it's a well-constructed sentence but it is not how people talk, it's how people write. So that's why I think it's sometimes easier for me to write for actors 'cause I know what's frustrating about, you know, sentences that come out just perfect. Well, who talks like that? And who of us don't overlap each other? Except on the radio, hopefully.
Working with [Kyle Chandler] in the scene was like playing tennis. You work with really talented actors, I think they make other actors look really, really good.
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