After 'Radio Flyer,' to this day, every family-oriented script or script with kid actors comes across my desk. That's just Hollywood: you get pigeonholed, and it's both a blessing and a curse, but you live with it.
We see only the script and not the paper on which the script is written. The paper is there, whether the script is on it or not. To those who look upon the script as real, you have to say that it is unreal - an illusion - since it rests upon the paper. The wise person looks upon both paper and script as one.
If I had a script that I was ready to shoot tomorrow, I'd work on it every day until we got into production as soon as possible, but I don't have that script yet, so I'm trying to find and support writers, really young writers and hopefully come across a story that I wanna tell one day.
When I read [the script] and saw that it was my fanboy wet dream of an Avengers script and that [Agent] Coulson was a big part of it, that was the great day for me. I just drove around the streets with the script in the other seat, giggling.
We were brought up in the school that teaches: You do what the script tells you. Deliver the goods without comment. Live it-do it-or shut up. After all, the writer is what's important. If the script is good and you don't get in its way, it will come off okay. I never discussed a script with Spence [Spencer Tracy]; we just did it. The same with Hank [Henry Fonda] in On Golden Pond. Naturally and unconsciously we joined into what I call a musical necessity-the chemistry that brings out the essence of the characters and the work.
You just knew you were in great hands with somebody so talented, so bright and with such depth. We both [with Ellen Page] loved the script and the book [Into the Forest], which I read after I read the script, and highlighted it and dog-eared it to craziness.
A script is just a script. A good script can be a bad movie, so easily. It's the process that makes it good. You need a good script, don't get me wrong, but you need all those other things to make a good movie. You really do.
When you try to be true to the script, changes occur. A script is there to show us a certain direction. But when you actually have the actors in and you start shooting the movie, you have the actor say a line and it doesn't sound right so you change it and make it different. It's the script that gives birth to these changes and the more you try to stay true to the script, the more that happens.
First, you need to write the script, re-work on lots of things. First draft, second draft, once the final script is ready then you visualize which actors fits the role in that the particular script they've written.
I have a huge family name to live up to and a huge legacy to live up to. I feel the pressure of that every day of my life, but I feel like it's a blessing and a curse.
I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.
I just trust the director and never overanalyse the script, screenplay, etc. You are just taking a bet at the end of the day, so confidence, be it on the filmmaker or the script, is all that counts.
For me, I need to fully immerse myself in a script to the point where I'm literally locking myself away for weeks at a time and I just write it. So I can write twelve to fifteen hours in a day, with breaks in between, obviously, but I need to just sort of live within the world of the script.
Every year, I go to Suriya's house to tie Rakhi on Raksha Bandhan. On one such day, he asked me if I have a script in hand and that's when I gave him the half-completed script of 'Soorarai Pottru.'
It's a shame, but every time I get something scientific in the script, I read up to find out what I'm talking about - but then I'm on to the next script and it's forgotten.
Shooting in Hong Kong, you can do whatever you want, even change the script every day. In Hollywood, you have to have a lot of meetings.
Almost every script that I've gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven't chosen them. All the ones I have chosen are because I've been fascinated with the source material or because of the script.