A Quote by Mary Steenburgen

I've never been able to write a movie script. I respect that skill so much, but it's not been the way my brain works. — © Mary Steenburgen
I've never been able to write a movie script. I respect that skill so much, but it's not been the way my brain works.
The way you write dialogue is the same whether you're writing for movies or TV or games. We use movie scriptwriting software to write the screenplays for our games, but naturally we have things in the script that you would never have in a movie script -- different branches and optional dialogue, for example. But still, when it comes to storytelling and dialogue, they are very much the same.
I shouldn't have been diagnosed as swiftly as I had been. I shouldn't have recovered as fully as I did. I shouldn't have been able to write a book that did as well as it did, and that book should never have been made into a movie. Yet, here I am.
I have always been convinced that the only way to get artificial intelligence to work is to do the computation in a way similar to the human brain. That is the goal I have been pursuing. We are making progress, though we still have lots to learn about how the brain actually works.
I have no sense of direction; I never know where I am. When I back up a car, I'm more likely to hit what's behind me than not, because I have no vision for it. I've never been able to play games or play cards because I can't in my head get the next move. I've never been able to balance a checkbook. So there's some brain damage, but it may be that very brain damage that allows me to do the work I do. I've never met a cartoonist who isn't quirky or weird in some ways.
I've been able to do a lot of things in the movies. I've been able to run with the buffalo, you know. I've been able to pitch a perfect game in Yankee Stadium. I've been in the bathtub with Susan Sarandon. I've had a lot of chances to do a lot of things. I enjoy sports, but I enjoy sports so much to the point that I wouldn't do the movie unless I thought it had a chance to be good.
I'll tell you something, and this is true: I've never been able to write a film which I didn't respect. I just can't do it. I'm very happy about all the films I haven't done.
I was never able to get through Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I've never been able to make it through. And I love the Smashing Pumpkins, they're one of my favorite bands ever, but I've never been able to listen to the whole thing all the way through.
I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.
I don't write about anything I don't want to write about. I like to think I could write about anything pretty much that I chose to. I have been asked to write songs about specific things, and I've always been able to come up with the goods.
But I've always been hard to cast, I've never been an ingenue, I've never been the romantic lead. I'm an actor; give me the script and I do what I do and hope it's good.
I learned so much about myself from reading this script and doing this movie [Shelter] because the level of judgment and the lack of humanity I saw in myself was disgusting. I never took into account what a homeless person might have been through.
My art feels like it's real disobedient. I can fill notebooks with observations and maybe they find their way into the work unconsciously, which is great. I've never been able to directly plug, like to take a little snip that I've picked up on the street and transfer it into a story. I don't know what's wrong, but it never works that way.
I start a boxing movie and that's kind of something I've been able to get to the gym for. It's great anytime you can parallel a skill that your character has. I just think it makes it even more rewarding.
You never know when you read a script how it's going to turn out because so much depends on the collaboration between people. If I'd been in some of the movies I turned down, maybe they wouldn't have been a success.
The difference between me and Tiny Lister is that he has never been the greatest actor, he hasn't been able to do a lot of big talking parts in movies, or even... he kind of has one emotion. He never looks at his career as an obstacle, he only looks at the positives. He's done... he knows, he has an opportunity. I mean, you see in a script, "Tiny Lister" type, you know you've made your mark. I mean on Friday After Next, that's what everyone expected me to be the new Tiny because it was that sort of part to fill that role, but if you look at the movie, there was a lot more there.
I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.
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