A Quote by Stephen Gaghan
When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do this for a while to make a little money so I could write novels. I thought movies were a second-class art form. I condescended to it - I didn't know enough to know it was really gonna be hard.
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When I first moved out to Los Angeles I was thinking, you know, I wanted to be an actor but I didn't really know what acting was about. I thought if I could be a model, or even do commercials and stuff like that for the rest of my life, I'd be happy.
I'm single. I just moved to a new city. I'm sort of starting over. I'm in Los Angeles. I don't really know what my life is right now. It's not what I thought it'd be at 37, and I think a lot of people can relate to that.
I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?
The Democrats tell all the poor people and all of the middle class that they're only where they are 'cause the rich have cheated them, exploited them, or stolen all their money. The way they're gonna make it equal is to take from those people who have just won life's lottery, the premise being that the poor and the rich and the middle class are gonna get the money.
I wanted to prove that I could be a starter. And then once I realized I was gonna be a sixth man and it wasn't gonna change, I just relished the role. I just said, 'I'm going to make it really hard on whoever it is that has to guard me these next 10-11 minutes that I'm in here.' And after a while you just create an identity.
I can never remember a time when I didn't want to be an actress, to be honest. And so, all through high school, I knew that I was gonna go to college in Los Angeles. I just didn't know where. And I knew that I was gonna try to get my theater degree.
I want[ed] to make a show of really big pictures, because you see male artists doing it all the time. It just seemed like such a big egotistical thing. I thought, 'I don't know that many women that really do that.... Damn it, I'm gonna do that-make this really big picture.'
Here's what I didn't know when I was starting out that I now know…I thought when you were starting out it was really hard to write because you hadn't broken in yet, you hadn't really hit your stride yet. What I found out paradoxically is that the next script you write doesn't get easier because you wrote one before…each one gets harder by a factor of 10.
I had never really thought about acting as art. You know, growing up in Youngstown, the Rust Belt of the world, it was always just a form of entertainment. Finally seeing it as an art form, I fell in love with it. So I moved out to California, never having visited before.
When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn't get any... I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it's a good place to get writing, because you're so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those.
Most people you'd tell "I'm gonna be a musician," they'd say, "you're crazy, you're gonna starve, you're gonna be poor, a drug addict, go to jail, you'll never make it, there's too much competition, it's a terrible business," etc. But my chorus teacher in high school said, "you've got what it takes to be a really good professional musician, you should consider it." That was an epiphany for me. So I thought, well, maybe I can help somebody, too.
I’m never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back, and I’m never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already. When we all know everyone’s life has been hard enough already it’s hard to watch the game we make of love, like everyone’s playing checkers with their scars, saying checkmate whenever they get out without a broken heart. Just to be clear I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there’s gonna have to be a thousand separate heavens for all of my flying parts.
Well, you just know, as a writer, I didn't really write one of the five best screenplays of the year. There were lots of brilliant screenplays; I was just one of the lucky ones who got nominated.
My studio's always in my house. I want to wake up and be like, 'You know I'm gonna make music today in my underwear. You know what, I'm gonna be in my pajamas. You know what, I'm actually just gonna stay inside for the next three days so I can make music.'
I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.
Most directors, I discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they're going to direct has something to do with them. And this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater than the male part. And I thought, 'Why am I out there looking for directors?'—because you look at a list of directors, it's all boys. It certainly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, 'I'm just gonna become a director and that'll make it easier.'
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