A Quote by Amy Holden Jones

Screenwriting is a terrible way to make a living and I always try to talk anyone out of it. Until you sit in a story meeting with studio executives with no particular ability or actors who haven't even graduated high school telling you exactly how to change your script, you haven't experienced what it's really like to be a screenwriter in Hollywood. Also, unlike novelists and playwrights, you don't own the copyright on your original material. It hurts when you sell a project you love and then suddenly the project you really cared about will never see the light of day.

Amy Holden Jones

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Amy Holden Jones
American - Writer
Born: 1955

I try to just be open to what the next experience is and how it makes me feel, just reading a project, or trying to get involved with a project, or thinking about a project, and what particular emotional flavor that brings. To me, it's never really about planning the next thing, or the career arc. It's about investigating how I feel, from project to project, and finding things that I haven't explored and what that would be like.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Sometimes I will give some very vague directions to the designer that I'm working with on a particular project and they'll come back and surprise me with something that really shows a lot of their own 'hand' in it. Other times I'll have a really clear idea about how I want it done and I'll draw it out pretty precisely and say 'make it look exactly like this' and it will be something where it looks like I can say it was 'fully my design'. The work can also range between the two.

Michael Bierut

Imagine, to be studying and then suddenly come out of school and come into a project and quickly realize that it is a project that works really well and that the people really like. It is like, "What a nice gift life has given me, no?"

Alfonso Herrera

Hollywood is a roulette wheel. Each project dictates what's going to happen for you next, and it doesn't really matter that your project is critically acclaimed or won awards or has fans worldwide. It's a matter of how many movie tickets and DVDs and on-demand movies that you sell.

Adam Green

The story, I like to say and remember, is always smarter than you—there will be patterns of theme, image, and idea that are much savvier and more complex than what you could come up with on your own. Find them with your marking pens as they emerge in your drafts. Become a student of your work in progress. Look for what your material is telling you about your material. Every aspect of a story has its own story.

Lucy Corin

When you really want a role and you really want a character, you become quite close to the script and the project, and it is sad when it doesn't go your way. But I've found there's always another one, which will be as good if not better. You can't let your failures bring you down when you're an actor, because then you can't get up.

Asa Butterfield

I own all the characters I created, thanks to the Writers Guild, so nobody can do anything without me. The way it works is: If the copyright owners instigate a project, like the movie, then I get a fee as creator. If I instigate a project, like the musical, I pay a percentage to the copyright owners.

Sherwood Schwartz

I have never had great expectations of my performance or of a film. I try not to think about the outcome. If you look that far ahead, it sort of taints your choices as an actor. I try as hard as I can to believe that no one is ever going to see it and that it's not even a movie. Then you can allow yourself to bare more. Then, once a project is done, I tend to forget about it until it comes out.

Heath Ledger

I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?"

Chris Rock

It [moviemaking] is not really done on a yearly basis. It's about how the material, and when the material comes in. If you develop your material and the script comes in great and you can attach a director and a cast and go off and make it, then I could make, I don't know, six [movies] a year. Or I could make one. It really depends.

Graham King

I'm really passionate about the song Sky Spills Over. It was fun creating it in the studio and I've been overwhelmed at the response it gets when we perform it live every night. My son Ryan is a really talented filmmaker so I always enjoy working with him on a project. But what made this project even more special was that 3 of my own grandkids were in the video. This video was a lot of fun to make. I hope people enjoy it!

Michael W. Smith

As an actor, you're lucky if you get a month before a project starts. There are times when you get a day before a project starts. So to be able to really sit and inhabit that mind and the story is really beneficial, and it really helps for me to be able to then compartmentalize as we're shooting and detach and go somewhere else.

Katie Aselton

I'm always sitting down and talking to people that are doing independent features. It depends on the project and the quotient of the people that are involved. There are a lot of different reasons [to do something], like a particular script that resonates with me, in a particular way. It may not so much even be about the part, but what the script has to say.

Jimmy Smits

And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the world will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light. But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.

Lauren Oliver

It's interesting for me to do the commentary with the actors because, as a director, you're so in your own world that you see it from your perspective, your issues and what you were trying to do, and then it's really very fun to hear their perspective on how it was to do a particular scene or how they felt, and sometimes, I didn't even know that, at the time.

Catherine Hardwicke

'The Fight Club' DVD is great. I like anything that has really good extras because as an actor, it's really great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff and see how different actors approach their particular project.

A. J. Cook

A Quote by Amy Holden Jones

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