But if you put a script up in front of me to read, or a cue card, I couldn't do it without stuttering.
When I got the script for Memento, I read it and I got killed off on page one and I fired my agent.
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.
I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.
I, of course, wanted to do something with Drew Barrymore. Please. So we were reading scripts back and forth and then we found this script, Fever Pitch...
Tony Hale is a devout Christian and is a complete retard when it comes to swearing. The script called for him to swear for about 30 seconds and he just couldn't do it.
Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.
The most important thing is the story. Not the script, but the story.
Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script.
There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.
In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you have to assemble things - through editing, for example. It's exactly the same in architecture. Architects also put together spatial episodes to make sequences.
But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.
I can't stand innuendo. If I see one in a script I whip it out immediately.
I don't act, anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind
The emotion is the music and the script is the libretto.
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.
If you want to be a filmmaker, ask yourself if you could imagine doing any other job. If you can, that’s a script!
Once you crack the script, everything else follows.
My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.
I'm working in a form of cinema that can be described, and has been described, as a diaristic form of cinema. In other words, with material from my own life. I walk through life with my camera, and occasionally I film. I never think about scripts, never think about films, making films.
Hmm, limelight... No, I'm not Sienna Miller or Angelina Jolie. I'm very lucky and happy, but I still find it very difficult to get good scripts and good roles. It's really a jungle out there.
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.
The secret of making movies is having the strongest possible script.
And I sit in my jacuzzi with my script.
