A Quote by Melanie Lynskey

Some scripts are pretty sparse. — © Melanie Lynskey
Some scripts are pretty sparse.
I don't get that many scripts. Back in Australia, I've pretty much done my own shows and really no work outside of that. It's only now that I'm starting to read some Hollywood film scripts, and I've read some really great ones.
The scripts of 'The Wire' are fantastic - the scripts of 'Breaking Bad,' the scripts of 'Mad Men,' the scripts of 'The Sopranos,' the scripts of 'Battlestar Galactica.' You could keep going on. They're incredibly well written.
I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact.
I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.
I didn't want to be seen as just a guy on a list. I'm interested in good scripts, scripts that are about something, scripts that move your acting along.
I write scripts, I read scripts, I meet people who chat about their scripts. So honestly, I don't feel bad if I don't act in a film, as long as people are making great films.
The test for me, when I read other people's scripts, is whether I feel like there's something about me that is the best person to tell this story. I have a pretty high bar for myself. There's a lot of scripts that I read and think, "Oh, this is great, but I think there are 50 other directors who could bring this to the cinema."
They're pretty particular about what they show. They certainly edit the scripts and have conversations with the writers about what they are and aren't willing to portray. But the writers and the network are pretty much on the same page.
I didn't want my script to get too out of control like that. So I actually made it a point not to do stuff like that, to pretty - to keep it more sparse than it's been in the last few years, or the last decade.
Okay, I am happy with the way I look, but I have never, never, ever thought of myself as a 'pretty girl.' Honestly. When I read some of these scripts I'm sent, and they describe the heroine as 'incredibly beautiful,' I wonder why they sent it to me.
A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' . . . because you read the stage directions, too.
I've read a hundred fantastic scripts that didn't pan out as films, and I completely put that on the directors. I've also read some mediocre scripts that have ended up being amazing, and I credit that to the directors. They're the storytellers. If you don't have a good storyteller, you really have nothing.
I'd like to see a quiet album and go back to being sparse again, because this album is such a big album, ... I'd like to go back to being as sparse as we possibly can.
Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.
I have done a pretty good job of partitioning my life digitally, posting utterances and stories that I'm happy to share with anyone on Twitter, leaving a few sparse comments and 'Likes' on Facebook (I'm not a huge user of the service, I'll be honest), and sending any number of photos to thousands of 'followers' on Instagram and Tumblr.
I've already had a hard time dealing with some of the trappings of success and turned to some pretty stereotypical escape routes - ways of escaping my own reality and falling into some pretty clichéd situations.
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