Scripts Quotes - Page 12

It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me.

Because of the way the business is structured, I have sometimes turned down scripts that I might otherwise have accepted had I known who was directing them.

I suppose I can do more for a script as an actor than as a writer - in the film sense.

Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.

I read the script of [Woman Under the Influence ] 50 times. And I thought about it. And then I did it.

I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.

Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed.

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie.

A lot of people have an opinion on scripts, but they aren't equipped to diagnose what the problems are. You realize that scriptwriting is such a specialist subject, but because it's so common, everyone thinks that they can talk about that. I think it's something that writers only know, that they can see.

Most scripts are so linear and simplistic in their plotline.

I have boxes full of stuff. Most actors do have a trunk full of stuff, paintings or scripts. It never comes to anything.

It takes a very long time to read a script. I'll look at a script, but there are so many scripts. I remember once being at the dentist, and the guy was doing my teeth and telling me about the screenplay he'd written and he said, "Will you read it?" And I said "Oh...okay." And it turns out that it was about a dentist!

It's hard to get a great idea sometimes. When you get a good one and you have a good script, you want to keep shepherding it to make it happen.

As agent asked if I wanted to be represented, and I said, "Yeah, sure, I'll give it a shot!" It was never something I had really put that much thought into. But then, Lee Kirk reached out and asked if I was interested, and I read the script of the [Ordinary World] and said, "Absolutely!"

It's a lot of work to read a crummy script.

When I read the script [of Good Kill], it read like a science fiction film. And Andrew [writer/director Andrew Niccol] is known for sci-fi. But when I spoke to him, he said this picture was 100% factual, which blew my mind. I realized then how little I knew about the drone program. And I felt that, if I knew so little about it, there must be others who should be educated about what's going on.

It just so happened that J.C.[Chandor] was a first-time feature director, and his script was exactly the kind of thing we were looking for.

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.

Actually when I gave out the script, I gave it with a CD of all the music I wanted to put in the movie, and again, we never thought we'd get all that music.

In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.

I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry.

Some reviewer might be out there saying, obviously Edge of Darkness didn't come off because of the script, blah blah blah, but everybody has read the script, except the journalist attacking it.

Yeah, well I can't see a situation where I wouldn't at least re-write as a director something I was going to direct. At the moment, I wouldn't direct anything that I hadn't written. I can now say, as everybody else says, that it all depends on the script.

I have a tendency to say 'yes' to a script or no to a script. Not 'yes' based on a rewrite.