A Quote by John Sayles
When I was really young I didn't know that there was such a thing as a screenwriter. I wrote stories.
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When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very difficult position for a screenwriter who's put so much passion into that, into the writing.
As a screenwriter you're the towel boy in the whorehouse. I mean you know you're lucky if you're invited to set. It's kind of like here is the blueprint, go and that's you know there has been some debate as to whether or not a film should be by the director or by the screenwriter or by both.
Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.
You know, most reporters can't go back to the towns they wrote stories about. I never wrote that kind of story.
About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me.
I came from a family where, you know, we sat down at the table every night, and you better have a story to tell. My father never wrote his stories down. And you know, I learned that they went farther if you wrote them down.
I think what Laura Linney was saying about teaching her all the lessons as a child actor, right, that's a whole ball of wax. That's a really mixed bag of stuff. I look at so many people that I knew personally or didn't know personally but who have ended badly, have died young, have been destitute - there are a lot of bad child-actor-gone-wrong stories, a very high percentage, but I think the thing about it is that a lot of those are Hollywood stories, and you don't have that same kind of a thing in the theater.
But it's hard for me to pinpoint where all my characters and dialogue come from - imagination or real life. My memoir, of course, was all about my past, and many of the short stories cleave very closely to my life, but the more stories I wrote in the collection, the more that seemed to be invented, but who knows... I think I'm writing about a young woman with acne who shoplifts, but I'm really writing about myself.
Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.
It is immature and lazy to imagine we know everything there is to know about someone before we know that someone. We don't know their stories, their histories, their real live human feelings. We don't know their favorite movies and best memories and what makes them afraid. It is unfair to take one fact, one thing they've said or we heard they said, or one thing they wrote, or someone else's experience, or a group they identify with and make a character sketch. If people did that to us, the picture would be so woefully incomplete, we wouldn't even recognize our own description.
I wrote a letter to my Dad - I wrote, "I really enjoy being here," but I accidentally wrote rarely instead of really. But I still wanted to use it, so I wrote, "I rarely drive steamboats, Dad - there's a lot of stuff you don't know about me. Quit trying to act like I'm a steamboat operator." This letter took a harsh turn right away.
I know stories of Pac, but I was really, really young when he passed. The fact that he was such a thespian, and so passionate about his craft, was shocking to me in a way.
I started writing when I was 26, so I don't even know what year that was. I wrote a script for me to star in. A friend of mine, who was an actor that I would compete against a lot, had written a script and was taking all these meetings. He just kept pushing me and was like, "You got to do it. You're going to love it!" He's a very successful screenwriter now. His name is Michael Bacall and he wrote 21 Jump Street, Project X, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So it was a few factors.
I started off as a journalist when I was young and I did not get paid unless I wrote three stories a day.
The great thing about getting married young like I did and having a child so young is that he gets to know all the relatives. He knew his great-grandmother, and we sat down together and tied down the stories of our uncles and aunts.
Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.
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