A Quote by Raymond Chandler

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay.

Raymond Chandler

Quote Topics

Adept Applied Art Basic Class Control Creation Degrade Else Everything Exploit Fundamental Hollywood However Made Make Making Most Motion Motion Picture Motion Pictures Nothing Paradise Pictures Play Producer Publisher Same Screenplay Skill Someone Thereby Too Which Without

Quote Author

Raymond Chandler
American - Novelist
July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959

People in Hollywood are not showmen, they're maintenance men, pandering to what they think their audiences want.

Terry Gilliam

I had gone to the bookstore, and while I hadn't bought any books on how to write a screenplay, I'd bought a couple of scripts so I could see how the formatting works. I just needed to know how a Hollywood screenplay looked on the page, which was something I was totally unfamiliar with.

Diablo Cody

The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.

Barry Eisler

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.

Alfred Gough

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

Nicholas Meyer

A great screenplay is the most powerful bait in Hollywood.

Sissy Spacek

Right when I moved to L.A., I started writing. I wrote some screenplay. I'm sure it's terrible. But I wrote a screenplay by myself. When I first moved to L.A., I had no friends. I didn't know anybody. I just sat in a little studio apartment, and I wrote a screenplay.

Dan Schneider

A screenplay adaptation of my 'Punktown' novel 'Health Agent' has been making the rounds. The screenplay was written by my friend, singer/songwriter Walter Egan of 'Magnet & Steel' fame!

Jeffrey Thomas

You cannot live in Los Angeles for any period of time without eventually trying to write a screenplay. It's like a flu bug that you catch ... Even the plumber has a screenplay in his truck.

Gilda Radner

The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause ; a motion, without a mover ; a circle, without a centre ; a time, without an eternity ; a second, without a first : these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it ; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not, This folly is infinite.