If the script grabs me and appeals to me, I'm really very keen to work on it.
It's not about Hollywood, it's always about a good script for me.
There is a story that you have to tell within a certain amount of time, and you can only show so much of the character. So as much as the script is born from the source material, there are certain limitations.
I just have a belief that when there is a rare script out there that speaks to you, you have to stick with it. You have to.
I was out to have a good time and have some fun. It's a fun script and fun people are in the movie.
A movie script more than anything else is a plan of action for the crew. Everybody in the crew looks at the script to see what they're going to do. It has to contain where you are, and how many people are there, and what they do, and what time of day it is, and what time of year it is.
The original pilot script [ of "Mary and Jane"], we literally just wrote for fun. It was, let's just do this.
I came across the script [42], and I read it, and I said, "I really want to do this." And when I had my agent call, they said, ah, you know, it's not what they're looking for. So, OK. And then I let it go for a while, and then it just kept gnawing at me, so I kept pushing.
For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.
Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.
Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.
When you're developing a story, for me anyway, it's all so important to get the script right, especially when you're telling the story of an icon. You've got to get it right. Otherwise, you'll get killed by critics and fans.
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.
Always care for the writing part first. Every good film project starts with good writing. If you have a good script, everything else follows. Writing is crucial.
People always say a script will be 'brought to life in a magical way,' but for me that has been proven wrong time and time again.
On Phantom... I listened to the music while I was reading the script. And it had just blown me away. I really... I was so excited about it. It's been a long time since I really got so excited about something.
At MGM there was a script cage in the basement where they’d show rushes. And I thought to myself, “How do I get into the script cage and find out what my future is?” I climbed into the script cage one night and spent the whole night in there. I saw the bowels of MGM. I saw the studio scripts that the producers had seen; the writers had just handed them in. And I started thinking this is a chance to pick my own roles.
When you hear Treat's [ Williams] doing a movie, or you'd like to work with Treat again, you hope the script is good. And then you find out the script is good. You go and you do it for the fun of it. And you feel like you can be proud of something.
When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.
What I learned is that I should probably read a screenplay every once in a while before I said 'yes'. You could make bad film out of a good script, but you're never going to make a good film out of a bad script.
When you first start out as an actor, you're just looking for a good part. As time goes on, if you're being held responsible for the movies themselves, you're looking for a good script all around.
It may take hundreds of pages before you begin to get a handle on the craft of writing, and your first scripts may not work. The next five to twenty may not either. However, the ones that do work owe everything to the ones that didn't.
What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.
I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.
Of course I would change anything if John Cassavetes said so - it's his script. But he was very easy about that.
