Top 403 Screenplay Quotes & Sayings - Page 3
Explore popular Screenplay quotes.
Last updated on September 19, 2024.
Movies are not the book. Movies are not even the screenplay. They are the movie.
My back went out and I gained 40 pounds while sweating over 'Perestroika.' It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I had to do before the screenplay to 'Lincoln.'
The novel's not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you'd have a twelve-hour movie.
I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.
Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.
Preston Sturges, who wrote The Palm Beach Story, said screenplay writing is architecture. That's why it's so rare to read one that's any good.
Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.
You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If someone drives it off a cliff, that's it.
Nine months after we submitted the original screenplay for 'The Attack,' the studio that was involved pulled out. I've been told that 'you don't write in a French way; you can't make these multicultural films.'
If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.
In LA, it's the law that you must be engaged in writing a screenplay with your hairdresser, pool boy, personal trainer, life coach, dog walker, or yoga instructor.
The brain needs to have a story; it needs to have a logical screenplay telling where we're coming from and what we're going to.
I am greatly impressed with the BBC's TV adaption of Charles Dickens' 'Bleak House.' The costumes, the sets, the acting and the screenplay are all superb. Every episode is riveting.
I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but for me, at least, there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.
I don't want to write any more screenplays, I'll tell you that right now. It's a waste of time. You've got too many people who think they have the answer to a good screenplay and they don't. No one knows.
Any story, any screenplay can only happen if the whole unit is professionally working towards it.
I wrote a screenplay for a 'Sweet Valley High' adaptation, and it's really amazing to me how many women who are my age have responded to the idea and are excited about the movie.
Whether I'm in front of the camera, behind the camera, at my computer writing a novel or a screenplay, as long as I get to entertain someone out there, I'm happy.
When I directed the third 'Insidious' film I loved it so much that I decided this is what I want to do from now on. I don't even think I would write something as a screenplay now with no intention of directing it.
Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.
I was originally casted to be in the Superman movie but I read the script and realized that it was mysteriously similar to my screenplay for Zach Braff the Movie.
I don't take trouble at all to conform a screenplay to my iconography. I don't say, "We can't do that - the audience wouldn't accept it." I try to take the limitations of what is required to play a leading character and then screw with them.
If you're writing a novel, you can afford to see where the spirit takes you, but in terms of structure and engineering with a screenplay, you have to be quite pragmatic; otherwise, it will run away from you.
Every so often, when I am feeling plucky, I try to write a screenplay that combines all 10 of Americans' top phobias and market it as a sleeper hit.
If I know what my finale is when I'm writing a screenplay, then I don't always have to chart out every scene before that. I can adequately find my way. I'm experienced enough to do that.
I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.
The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.
Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.
Really, when I write a book I'm the only one I have to please. That's the beauty of writing a book instead of a screenplay.
Never take no for an answer. It took me 20 years between the time I wrote my first screenplay and the time I actually got money to direct a movie.
If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.
This is not a screenplay. I don't do twenty drafts. I'm not going to show this to you until it's published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.
I like the varying rhythm of being a writer that you have a period of being in complete isolation where it's just you and the book and your screenplay and no-one can read it.
In film, it is always collaborative, and so to me, it doesn't make sense to not be collaborative in one of its most critical arenas - which is the screenplay.
I want to release another CD this year, finish writing a screenplay, and make another short film
To me, the most perfect screenplay ever written will be one word, when you finally reduce it down to that. Until then, writing will be an imperfect form of communication.
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.
On every film, there are producers all over the place, and everyone's got to have an opinion. I think the screenplay is a beautiful form with great potential, but the environment around it is awful for a writer.
I think you leave your imprint on every screenplay. I like to bring my experience as a woman to all my female characters that hopefully makes them a little more layered and complex.
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.
When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
It's a great role for any age. Any actress wishes they would find a screenplay that means as much to them as "Aquarius" meant to me, as a person and a citizen.
I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.
So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.
A screenplay is really a blueprint for something that will be filmed. Therefore you must always keep in mind that whatever you write is going to be staged, for real.
Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.
If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.
I never could have written the screenplay because I would have been forced to learn new software and I can't learn one more thing.
[Oscar Wilde's Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that's why I guess it's semi-autobiographical.
No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.
In 'Expendables 2,' there was a lot of vulgar dialogue in the screenplay. For this reason, many young people wouldn't be able to watch this. But I don't play in movies like this. Due to that, I said, 'I won't be a part of that if the hardcore language is not erased.'
I'd like to be a better writer, but I have no dreams to direct or do a screenplay. And I'd love to have a big starring role in a movie because the paycheck would be bigger. That's the only reason I do films.
Writing is my number one passion. I've written two novels. I've written a screenplay. I also write short stories and poetry.
I want to release another CD this year, finish writing a screenplay, and make another short film.
The good thing about directing a screenplay that you've written is that you see the film in your head as you're writing it and then you see those decisions through to the end.
I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It's astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.
Writing with a film in mind - writing like a screenplay - is a sureshot recipe for disaster.
'Deadpool' took seven years to get to the motion picture screen, and I use that as my measurement. That tested me and my patience more than anything I could've imagined because the screenplay was so good.
I love film and have taken a stab at a screenplay. I love writing dialogue and found it highly enjoyable.
The day you step on the floor the meter is ticking and time is of the essence. You can't really afford to not know what you're doing. So I think the screenplay is a great tool to get everybody on the same page.
