A Quote by John Waters
I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.
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I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.
I only worked on that one movie, but then quickly realized that the path of being an assistant director was not gonna get me to producing. It's a different path coming up through production management and then line producing. So I basically was in the position where I was going to take any job that felt creative, like the one I got, which was reading scripts and writing coverage. So even though I was taking a job where I was making less money than the job immediately prior, it seemed like the right thing for me.
My agent came to me with a deal from another publisher and I signed a deal and got the advance with no idea of what I was going to do. I probably procrastinated for almost a year, but we had meetings and I was basically going to spoof "Take Ivy," but then it kind of turned into something else. I wanted it to be a book of all the things that made me who I am, like Brooks Brothers, Hot Wheels, "The Andy Griffith Show" and G.I. Joes. I couldn't sit still and do it, so my agent had to come to my house and force me to do it.
If you ask any economist, they'll tell you all the mortgage interest deduction does is raise the price of the house. So a couple is out looking at the house, they say, "Oh, we love this house, but we couldn't make the monthly payment." And the realtor says, "Yeah, but you're going to get a tax break." So people pay more than they would otherwise. You take a loss even though you're making a gain.
If you take a movie like Easy Rider which everyone counts as the beginning of New Hollywood, that is a big movement. And then, when you really dissect that film and the people that were behind that movie, you realize that it has Roger Corman written all over it. Easy Rider is a hybrid film, taking The Trip and The Wild Angels and making a new explosion. And the people that were making it, guess what, they were all [people who had worked with Roger Corman].
I never get discouraged about anything. If I got discouraged I wouldn't keep giving out the script then the movie wouldn't be made. The biggest thing about movie industry is to never get discouraged because once you get discouraged you lose interest. You'll stop being successful in something you love doing. If you get discouraged in things and not even want to finish or do them, then why even bother starting?
Ever since the movie premiered at Cannes, I've had a sudden surge of scripts and interest.
My dad's got a brilliant eye for scripts 'cos he's a literary agent. He and my agent read a load of scripts and filter them.
What I do usually is read the book first, for pleasure, to see if my brain starts connecting with it, as a movie. And then, if I say yes, I read it again, only this time I take a pen and, inside the book, I say, "Okay, this is a scene. I don't need this. I'm going to try this. I'm not going to take this." And then, I use that book like a bible and each chapter heading, I write a menu of what's in that chapter, in case I ever need to reference it. And then, I start to outline and write it. I get in there and it starts to evolve, based on having re-read it again.
I don't know a lot of writers, even writers who have been on the bestseller list for a few weeks, or writers who have gotten movie options, who can live on just their writing income. Once you break it down to the years it took to write the book, place it, promote it, and you pay the agent, pay the taxes, the annual income is not enough to live on comfortably. I do not have a starving artist inclination. I'm from the working class. I don't feel creative unless I feel like my house is going to be there and I'm going to be fed. I can't worry about money and write. Maybe some people can.
I'm not extravagant, so I won't need to rein it in too much. Me and my friend make each other cards. I love being creative and making things. But a better credit crunch idea is to not even bother sending cards.
When you making a piece of comedy entertainment, the audience is a big component there. You do have to end up getting rid of things that you love, but in the interest of making a movie that's not longer than two hours, and in the interest of when every joke hopefully is good enough, then everybody looks good. You cut things that you love, but ultimately it's for the greater good of making the whole movie better.
Making a show is such a long process. You go through a TV production house that will commission scripts, and if they like what you've written, they take it to a network and sell it to them. It has always felt very far away from something that's actually real.
I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them anyway!
I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them, anyway!
The author with the greatest influence on me is my friend Stephen Harrigan, who critiques everything I write before I even bother to show it to my agent or editor. He's a truly great writer - author of Gates of the Alamo and other books you might know of, and his instincts about what's working in a story, and what's not, are just about perfect. My books would be very different without his influence.
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