A Quote by John Gregory Dunne
In the spring of 1988, my wife, Joan Didion, and I were approached about writing a screenplay based on a book by Alanna Nash called 'Golden Girl,' a biography of the late network correspondent and anchorwoman Jessica Savitch.
Related Quotes
I'm so old that when I started keeping a diary they were in actual books, and I think that's one the reasons that I've never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so it's bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts you'd performed with somebody you had known for 20 minutes, that's a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, "I met J. and we had sex five times last night." But I would never write about what we did.
Somebody approached me about writing a biography on me, I told them they were too late.
When Nancy Reagan was newly the first lady of California, Joan Didion came and had an hour-long interview. She thought it went great, and then Joan Didion just eviscerated her in the most - possibly not inaccurate - but in the most devastating way.
I love anything by Joan Didion. Incidentally, she was one of the local moms when I was growing up in Point Dume. She always reminded me a little bit of my mother, so I feel a great affinity. I love the precision of Didion's writing. There's a construction and a craftsmanship to her sentences that's imbued with so much emotion.
I worked as a carpenter for a few years. I began writing. I wrote a book about my time in Africa - that came out in 1988 - called 'The Village of Waiting.'
Anyone writing a picture-book biography of Lincoln has a different set of responsibilities from someone writing a biography for sixth-graders, say, or from a Lincoln scholar writing an academic book on Lincoln. Each of these writers has a different audience and different goals. That's obvious.
My literary heroes were mostly women writers and thinkers - Joy Williams, Joan Didion, Anne Sexton, June Jordan, Sarah Schulman, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Christa Wolf - and much of this writing was political as well as literary.
I was really influenced by Joan Didion and Pauline Kael; they were both at the height of their influence when I was coming into my own as a reader.
I was approached about having my own network many, many years ago. There were some people who wanted to start up a network, and I didn't want to get that involved in the business aspect of it.
It was January 1983 when we launched 'Frontline' on PBS with 'An Unauthorized History of the NFL.' The program was anchored by Jessica Savitch. We wanted to get attention, and we got it.
I love Joan Didion, but I love her writing. I don't think meeting her could solve my problems or make me understand the world better.
No doubt, there are those who believe that judges - and particularly dissenting judges - write to hear themselves say, as it were, 'I, I, I.' And no doubt, there are also those who believe that judges are, like Joan Didion, primarily engaged in the writing of fiction. I cannot agree with either of those propositions.
There is something so hopeful about a diary, a journal, a new notebook, which Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf both wrote about. A blog. Perhaps we all are waiting for someone to discover us.
Well in the book Carrie was my alter ego. In real life, Sarah Jessica and I don't look anything alike. But people do say that we sound alike. Sarah Jessica is an adorable girl and she is very funny.
I don't mean to talk so much about screenplay writing. Who wants to talk about screenplay writing? I've taught it and I felt like a charlatan because what I was teaching I probably couldn't do.
We now live in a world both in film and television where everything is based on something. You point out, "Star Wars" was an original screenplay, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," an original screenplay, "Ghostbusters" an original screenplay, "Back to the Future." All these things that people love were original ideas many years ago.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer