Movie Screenplay Quotes

So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? ~ Nora Ephron

I won't do this movie because I don't believe the love story," she told Selznick. "The heroine is an intellectual woman, and an intellectual woman simply can't fall in love so deeply. ~ Ingrid Bergman

... ... , but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there. ~ Margaret Edson

The reason they don't make movies for adults and for people which are the largest bulge of the population is because they are not usually going to the movie the first weekend. They take a while to learn about it, probably word of mouth. It takes a lot of money to release a picture. ~ Rob Reiner

I remember watching an old Dracula movie once with Alphonse and having him laugh himself sick at the sight of a vamp only a few days out of the grave supposedly raising another one.He'd been impossible for weeks afterwards,mercilessly teasing all the weaker vamps in court about the three-day-old baby that was more powerful than them. ~ Karen Chance

In the same way that so many people read 'Harry Potter' and went to see 'Harry Potter,' just because a movie is about a kid, doesn't mean it's for kids, and just because a movie is about a girl, doesn't mean it's for girls. ~ Cassandra Clare

The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly. ~ Kiefer Sutherland

The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting. ~ Brian De Palma

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' ... because you read the stage directions, too. ~ Al Pacino

Balancing my film career and my music will be something I'm just going to have to deal with, as it happens. I think I can balance it out; the choices will probably be pretty clear. If there's a movie I just have to do, I will work the music around it. ~ Lukas Haas

I learned early on that it's heartbreaking to - there's the editor that comes in, and then they have to craft the movie together, and sometimes you give a whole performance that's just been cut up, and maybe it's better for it, absolutely, but you still have to deal with the loss of that. ~ Tavis Smiley

You have to listen to the movie while you're making it. I think that's important. ~ Gary Ross

One of the really nice things about having the time to do a movie is that you can fine tune it. With TV, you really need A-level people to make a good TV show because it's moving so fast. ~ Joel Surnow

There are certain things in 'Twilight' ... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative. ~ Kristen Stewart

I like 'Notting Hill.' If you can do a movie that's simple, but do it well, there's room for that. ~ Chris Evans

The only way to stop Jim Brown was to give him a movie contract. ~ Carl "Spider" Lockhart

I didn't know how story worked. So, when writing the screenplay, people introduced me to the science of it. And I'm grateful. I'll probably use that information for the rest of my career, in terms of writing novels or writing stories. And then, of course, to help me live a better story, a more meaningful story ~ Donald Miller

We released 'The Interview' through a variety of platforms, and we continue to look for other distribution options. Throughout this whole process, we never stopped - not for a single moment - trying to secure a broad release. Our studio takes great pride in continuing to grow the release of this movie and making it a success. ~ Michael Lynton

Life is like a movie that you cant slow down or skip ahead. You simply keep watching, learning, until the very end.
That is why life is a mystery because you can never predict the future or learn of the end. ~ Nicholas Lopez

I like to do a movie, to be on it 8, 10 weeks. It evolves as you're working on it. Little things come to you every day. It's a slow process, and when you have to pack it into a short period of time, which you do for television, the experience is not one that I cherish. So if it's going to be television, it's really got to be the right thing. ~ Bonnie Bedelia

'The Lego Movie?' I've never heard of it. ~ Ian McKellen

Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid. Not paranoid, exactly, but always alert and aware, like checking out the exits in the movie theatre or the fire escape in a hotel. You came to know, in a way you hadn't as a kid, that the body you inhabited was vulnerable, imperfectly fortified. On TV, in the papers, in books and movies, it isn't ever men being raped or kidnapped or bludgeoned or dismembered or burned with acid. But in stories and crime shows and TV series and movies and in life too, it's going on all the time, all around you. So you learn, in your mind, that your body needs to be protected. It's both precious and totally dispensable, depending on whom you encounter. ~ Claire Messud

It is the importance of this quality of generosity in fiction that requires a measure of childishness in the writer. People who have strong mental focus and a sense of purpose in their lives, people who have respect for all that grownups generally respect (earning a good living, the flag, the school system, those who are richer than oneself, those who are beloved and famous, such as movie stars), are unlikely ever to make it through the many revisions it takes to tell a story beautifully, without visible tricks, nor would they be able to tolerate the fame and fortune of those who tell stories stupidly, with hundreds of tricks, all of them old and boring to the discriminating mind. First, with his stubborn churlishness the good writer scoffs at what the grownups are praising, then, with his childish forgetfulness and indifference to what sensible people think, he goes back to his foolish pastime, the making of real art. ~ John Gardner

He moved well. He looked good. He was tall. He worked on his body and this work was extremely successful. He had a lot of thick, messy black hair. And he had a face that was movie star handsome in a way that, without a doubt, launched a million wedding fantasies, even from women who just caught a glimpse of him walking down the street. ~ Kristen Ashley

You always want to do something different. I enjoy the process. I like making movies, and it's increasingly hard to find a movie you'd want to make. ~ John Landis

You never want to intentionally make a confusing movie. ~ Joseph Kosinski

On a television show, you basically make a movie a week. Movies take three months - it's crazy. They're so slow, it's like vacation to me. ~ Eva Longoria

It's much, much harder working on a show than it is working on a movie. It really is. Even if you're in production, that production lasts for a set period of time. A TV show goes on for months and months and months. ~ Zak Penn

There is a book to be written, for instance, on small errors in subtitles. In the Fred Astaire musical Royal Wedding, for instance, the English girl he falls for, played by Sarah Churchill (daughter of Sir Winston), is engaged to an American, whom we never see but who's called Hal - like Falstaff's prince, like a good high Englishman. That English H, though, was completely inaudible to the French translator who did the subtitles, and so throughout the film the absent lover is referred to in the subtitles as Al - Al like a stagehand, Al like my grandfather. If you have the habit of print addiction, so that you are listening and reading at the same time, this guy Al keeps forcing his way into the movie. "But what shall I say to Hal - that I have never loved him?" Patricia says to Fred. Down below it says, "Et Al - qu'est-ce que je vais lui dire? ~ Adam Gopnik

I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life. ~ Jodie Foster

Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.'

Huh?'

Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.'

The manner in which the other were regarding him/her made Can O' Beans feel compelled to continue. 'The word neat, for example, has precise connotations. Neat means tidy, orderly, well-groomed. It's a valuable tool for describing the appearance of a room, a hairdo, or a manuscript. When it's generically and inappropriately applied, though, as it is in the slang aspect, it only obscures the true nature of the thing or feeling that it's supposed to be representing. It's turned into a sponge word. You can wring meanings out of it by the bucketful--and never know which one is right. When a person says a movie is 'neat,' does he mean that it's funny or tragic or thrilling or romantic, does he mean that the cinematography is beautiful, the acting heartfelt, the script intelligent, the direction deft, or the leading lady has cleavage to die for? Slang possesses an economy, an immediacy that's attractive, all right, but it devalues experience by standardizing and ~ Tom Robbins

When they watch a movie and they know that you're in a relationship, you just kind of watch that constantly. ~ Charlize Theron

The Hindus are busy letting themselves be seen riding in Cadillacs instead of smearing themselves with sandalwood paste and bowing in front of Ganpati. The Moslems would rather miss evening prayer than the new Disney movie. The Buddhists think it's more important to take over in the name of Stalin and Progress than to meditate on the four basic sorrows. And we don't even have to mention Christianity or Judaism. ~ Paul Bowles

I hope the next actress offered millions to play the 'fat girl for the day' stops to think about this before she signs the contract - even if just to ask, like any professional actress would in any other situation, 'Why does she weigh 350 pounds? And why me for the part?' If the director can't answer these questions, don't do the movie. ~ Allison Anders

I'm looking to produce more stuff: TV shows, commercials, music videos and short films. I'm building my catalog so I can have some fun in between the times that I get to a movie. ~ Larenz Tate

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay. ~ Richard Attenborough

When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn't really matter to me. I don't go to the wrap party. I don't go to the premiere. ~ Henry Rollins

Movie music is noise ... even more painful than my sciatica. ~ Thomas Beecham

I'm kind of a huge movie buff and a video game nerd person. ~ Jared Gilman

I live in New York City, and I'm making huge action movies. The people that make huge action movies live in L.A., and they're surrounded by other people who make huge action movies. I'm surrounded by people making documentaries! ~ Doug Liman

Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone. ~ Michael Crichton

I saw this movie 'The Right Stuff' when I was in college, and it really rekindled my interest in being an astronaut. I started taking those steps, and then I realized it would be the chance of a lifetime. It would be a dream life: not just a job, but the whole life. ~ Michael J. Massimino

The hackers who hacked into Sony have leaked the upcoming script for the new James Bond movie. Some of the executives said the news left them shaken but not stirred. ~ Conan O'Brien

Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard. ~ John Ridley