Screenplays Quotes

I don't assume, because I can write screenplays, that I know how to write a novel. It's a very different world. There's a craft involved in storytelling, and it's a different kind of craft. But yes, someday I will do that. It just might be awhile. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

The mix of soft-focus glamour,Mills and Boon romance and the inevitable feel-good ending is here, but what marks these films is an authentic core.Genuine, unaffected moments, long absent from 70mm movie content, are back. ~ Anupama Chopra

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' is one of the first unrated movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. But many video stores won't take a movie that's not rated, so I had to make the movie an R. ~ Alfonso Cuaron

A book is maybe about 350 pages, and the prose allows for readers to get a glimpse into the internal lives of the characters. A screenplay is 120 pages, and it's all dialogue and action. The pacing of films is different, the structure is often different, and the internal lives of the characters must come across through the acting. Movies are just a different experience than reading - so it just depends on what an individual prefers. ~ Nicholas Sparks

He [Taika Watiti] worked on this screenplay for a couple of years and just getting it right and the result is there. He's made really close to a perfect film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] ... Perfect as you can be. ~ Rhys Darby

I'm very keen. Adaptations of other people's work, too. I got fascinated by the adaptation process, so I think that'd be a really interesting task. I would happily write original screenplays as well. I think it's become one of my favorite genres. ~ Emma Donoghue

I present the nominees, well, not me the Voice of God, for Best Screenplay. ~ Emma Thompson

I think I would like to write screenplays, books, really anything. ~ Kara Hayward

My screenplays are very detailed. The reason they're detailed ... you have to think on your feet. You have to be ready to change because there are no such things as ideal conditions. ~ Deepa Mehta

I don't care who you are. When you sit down to write the first page of your screenplay, in your head, you're also writing your Oscar acceptance speech. ~ Nora Ephron

Films are born from screenplays and they are guided by words. They are born very limited and there is no space for real creation: graphic creation, pictorial creation, or audiovisual creation. If we really want to use the art of animation with all its strength, we have to rethink the processes by which it's made because the medium is the message. ~ Alex Abreu

I find reading screenplays difficult, as they're only a roadmap for what a movie might end up being. ~ Daniel Handler

By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency. ~ William Monahan

Screenplays aren't written to be read, they're written to be made into movies. ~ Edward Norton

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn't be writing screenplays. I'd be writing novels. ~ Quentin Tarantino

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think. ~ Christopher Darden

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern. ~ James Cameron

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking. ~ Kerry Washington

Scrivener is where I live. I'm planning the next novel, two screenplays and a couple of short stories with it and it's amazing how fluid the software makes the process. I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor. ~ Michael Marshall Smith

One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It's your voice that's important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can't be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you're the writer and the director. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Most of the ideas I've gotten for novels or screenplays have occurred to me while I was either shaving or taking a bath. A number have occurred to me while I was driving 127. I rarely get ideas when seated in front of my typewriter, which I find ironic because I have always suspected that typing somehow plays a key role in writing. ~ Gary Reilly

I had written eight drafts of the Lemony Snicket' screenplay when this changing-of-the-guard thing happened, and I said to the new producers, "I don't think I could write any more drafts." I guess I was sort of hoping they would say, "Well that's okay, this last one is perfect." But instead, they said, "It's funny you should say that. We don't think you can write any more drafts either." ~ Daniel Handler

Once I was in college, I was actually trying to write a comedy screenplay and I wrote basically the worst movie ever and just threw it away and never showed anybody. Everyone needs to get that first bad screenplay out of your system before you start writing other stuff. ~ Scot Armstrong

Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru! ~ Jeff Lyons

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. ~ Harrison Ford

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. ~ Zach Braff

There always had to be a survivor. Maybe this simply spoke to the optimism of the men writing those screenplays; even with an uncomfortable sci fi plot they had to subconsciously comfort themselves by thinking that at least a hundred people would survive.
Someone has to survive ~ Chris Dietzel

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships. ~ Matt Damon

I can write ten or twelve screenplays in the time it takes me to write one novel. This allows me to offload all of my stories. But it's also not as creatively fulfilling. ~ Benjamin Percy

In a novel, language is your principal tool, you try to build pictures in the mind of the reader. When you write a screenplay, the language is just a transition, the final goal is a picture on the screen, it's the only thing the audience sees. ~ Philippe Claudel

I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together. ~ John Niven

I write mostly as a director. That's why my screenplays are very detailed. So I get into the images I see. I like that. ~ Deepa Mehta

I write a number of screenplays, and I've never really come up with a part for a movie star. ~ Andrew Dominik

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays. ~ Alice Hoffman

I loved the tone and the characters. They're all very different and they're all very typical for their time. When you read the screenplay you feel like meeting them and getting them off the page and on to the screen. ~ Lone Scherfig

I think the reason I wrote screenplays for nearly a decade was because it was my territory. I could stake that out. ~ Nick Harkaway

I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation. ~ Satyajit Ray

I always say when you write a book, you're a 'one-man band.' Whereas, when you finish a screenplay, it's just a sketch. ~ Diablo Cody

Well, you just know, as a writer, I didn't really write one of the five best screenplays of the year. There were lots of brilliant screenplays; I was just one of the lucky ones who got nominated. ~ Patrick Marber

Every year I hear people complain that the quality of screenplays and movies is declining. In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be. ~ Viggo Mortensen

I have written a couple of screenplays for studios, and each time has been less gratifying than the last. In my experience, they want no real representations of homosexuality, they want no complexity, they are terrified of ambiguity and unanswered questions - they don't know what they want, except that they want to make lots of money. The only freedom I've ever had as an artist has been in the theatre ... ~ Craig Lucas

When I was in advertising, I did a great deal of work on television commercials. A co-worker and I wrote a screenplay, which led to a few more screenplays, and some were optioned by production companies. I was advised to move to California but didn't want to make the move. I decided to use another form of storytelling, so I wrote a novel. ~ M.J. Rose

I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it. ~ Emily Mortimer

When I'm writing novels, even screenplays, it's never an actor I have in mind; it's always the version in my head of who the character is. Once somebody gets cast, I have to adjust a little bit to who they are. ~ Jonathan Tropper

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House. ~ Harold Ramis

I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve. ~ Stacy Peralta

Coffee shops are everywhere, especially in Los Angeles, chock full of sad sacks desperate to make sure their screenplays make it into the right hands ... or any hands, for that matter. The one thing that makes a coffee shop truly great, though, is charm. ~ Nate Corddry

As Frances had learned to do in times of uncertainty, she created a project over which she had total control and began writing a book "Dedicated to the memory of Irving Thalberg as a tribute to his vision and genius." How to Write and Sell Film Stories was written for "serious students of film technique." She filled the straightforward textbook with anecdotes from her films and others' to convey the lessons on the development of plot, motivation, and characters she had learned with Thalberg. She had come to believe that because of increased censorship and the limited number of adaptable plays and novels, "eighty percent of the motion pictures produced will be soon be stories written exclusively for the screen" and the time was right for a book on original screenplays. The audience for the book was immediate; universities ordered copies before it was published and it quickly went into several printings. The book led to her taking on an advice column on screen writing for Cinema Progress, a serious educational film magazine published by the American Institute of Cinematography based at the University of Southern California. She opened her house to roundtable discussions with students and sponsored a scenario contest with the winners serving as studio "apprentices. ~ Cari Beauchamp

Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director. ~ Tom Skerritt

Makebelieve is a writer's best friend. ~ Solange Nicole

I've been writing for a long time, since the late '60s. But it hasn't been in the same form. I used to write scripts for television. I wrote for my comedy act. Then I wrote screenplays, and then I started writing New Yorker essays, and then I started writing plays. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the New Yorker essays, but they were comic. I didn't start writing prose, really, until the '90s. In my head, there was a link between everything. One thing led to another. ~ Steve Martin

When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn't get any ... I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it's a good place to get writing, because you're so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those. ~ Clark Gregg

I love Hap and Leonard and plan to write more about them, but not exclusively about them. I have always worked in film, or since the eighties, but my screenplays - though I got paid and did screenplays for Ridley Scott and John Irvin and Mark Romanek - seldom got made. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

If I am a prolific writer and turn my hand, with what seems to some as indecent haste, from novels to screenplays to stage and radio plays, it is because there is so much to be said, so few of us to say it, and time runs out. ~ Fay Weldon

I think it started to feel like home when I stopped maintaining any pretense that I was ever going to be in the movie business. I went there like many writers - I had a screenplay deal and I would go to these meetings and it was the typical thing. And I hated it. I was not interested in writing screenplays, actually. But I kept feeling like that was what I was supposed to do. It was just this horrible cognitive dissonance. ~ Meghan Daum

Stallone is a great writer. He wrote one of the best screenplays ever written. Rocky. It is one of the biggest classics of all time. I think in the past, he was shying away from writing his own stuff, because there is a lot of pressure when you star in something that you write. ~ Dolph Lundgren

Most screenplays I receive are boring, and some are straight-out bad. ~ Max Von Sydow

I just finished a novel, and I'm back kind of noodling on the screenplays. Screenplays are tough. I am making music, I'm just not sure what kind of music it is or where it's going. ~ Michael Nesmith

I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays. ~ Christopher Meloni

Douglas Adams did not enjoy writing, and he enjoyed it less as time went on. He was a bestselling, acclaimed, and much-loved novelist who had not set out to be a novelist, and who took little joy in the process of crafting novels. He loved talking to audiences. He liked writing screenplays. He liked being at the cutting edge of technology and inventing ~ Douglas Adams

I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now. ~ Diablo Cody

I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started. ~ Preston Sturges

'Juno' really changed things for me and I get a lot of screenplays come in now, but I like to self-generate and I like to kind of pursue my own ideas. And I think the more personal the better. ~ Jason Reitman

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting. ~ Robert Altman

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays. ~ Beth Henley

When authors who write literary fiction begin to write screenplays, everybody assumes that's the end. Here's another who's never going to write well again. ~ Richard Russo

If I could find the right kind of property, get tied in with the right movie, I'd love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right now. ~ Al Yankovic

A film is a living thing. The screenplay is a guideline. You really need to have a good, sound script to know that you have a dramatic structure that's going to work thematically, and to know how one scene will got through another, and to get a sense of character. ~ Jose Padilha

The service in L.A. is the best. You don't get sarcastic, surly, fed-up waiters and waitresses like you do in England. They're good at their job and they're there for the customer. The only depressing thing is a lot of them have written more screenplays than me. ~ Ricky Gervais

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet. ~ Tom Hardy

Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue. ~ Elmore Leonard

I simply asked if I could have a go at adapting a screenplay. But I did not want any money, in case I failed because I did not want a script out there with my name on it that might be completely dysfunctional. ~ Ben Affleck

I find screenplays easy to write, my novels being very visual. You see what people look like. The physical action is described. ~ John Irving

I've come to view screenwriting assignments as playwriting grants, because they provide a considerable financial cushion. However, they can also be extremely time-consuming. Film projects tend to drag on and on, which takes me away from the theatre, and then they don't get made. At the same time, the screenplays that have come my way have been quite challenging, for the most part, and even enjoyable. ~ Donald Margulies

I read every screenplay that was being sent to the other directors. None were being sent to me, but I was reading what others were choosing and what the best writers were writing. ~ Rupert Sanders

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love. ~ Michael Haneke

There is magic in the old and magic in the new; the trick is to successfully combine the two. ~ A.D. Posey

If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something. ~ Bill Murray

I began writing fictional stories and little screenplays when I was in fifth grade. ~ Cary Fukunaga

Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can. ~ Nick Cave

A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay. ~ Dirk Benedict

Well, I kind of approach both of them similarly in (that) I always see it as a movie first because that's my background. Cindy Kelley, who has been my writing partner on my novels, she works more on the prose side and the description side of the storytelling because, obviously, there's a lot more of that in a novel than in a screenplay. You only have up to 120 pages in a screenplay. ~ Michael Landon, Jr.

I've had a real lucky time working in Hollywood. I've talked to other screenwriters, and they're all kind of beaten down and their spirits are crushed, because they work on these screenplays and these projects, and then directors either take them and change everything, rewrite them and make them worse, or they film them and they're nothing like how they imagined it to be. ~ Daniel Clowes

I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being. ~ Charlie Kaufman

The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays ... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again. ~ Ray Bradbury

With screenplays, it's all about being as concise as possible. If you have a scene that's set in a bar, you just have to write, 'Interior: Bar.' ~ David Benioff

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise. ~ Robert McKee

Over the years, many producers have come and gone, and screenplays were written and abandoned. It's the Hollywood process. It's hard to get things done. ~ Lawrence Blume

I know I'll keep writing poems. That's the constant. I don't know about novels. They're hard. It takes so much concentrated effort. When I'm writing a novel it's pretty much all I can do. I get bored. It takes months. Movies do the same thing. It's all-encompassing. It feels like I'm going to end up writing poems, short stories and screenplays. ~ Sherman Alexie

[Over breakfast] We discussed the 'novelisation' question. This is where the studio pay someone to novelise my script and sell it as Sense and Sensibility. I've said if this happens I will hang myself. Revolting notion. Beyond revolting.
Lindsay [Doran] said that the executive she had discussed it with had said 'as a human being I agree with you
but ... ' I laughed until my porridge was cool enough to swallow. ~ Emma Thompson

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

I don't think I write differently when I'm writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences. ~ Aaron Sorkin

The idea of directing was something that I always had in the back of my mind, and writing as well. I began to write screenplays when I was in my 20's. ~ Charles Martin Smith

My first book, about Ruby Ridge, was made into a miniseries on CBS in 1996, and since then, I've dabbled in Hollywood, pitched a few things, sold a couple of screenplays and a pilot that I wrote with a buddy from Spokane, flirted with seeing 'Citizen Vince' as a film, and most recently, adapted 'The Financial Lives of the Poets' as a script. ~ Jess Walter

There are many self-proclaimed "screenwriting gurus" - though how you get to be a "guru" of something you've never actually done is beyond us. Screenplays are like blueprints. A guy who's drawn up a lot of blueprints that have never actually been made into buildings is not an "architecture guru," he's an "unemployed douchebag." A guy who talks about screen-writing but who's never sold a screenplay is not a "screenwriting guru," he's a "lecture circuit bullshit artist." From now on, that's what we'll call them. ~ Thomas Lennon

I'm not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page. ~ Quentin Tarantino

I'm attracted to short screenplays. Nobody really wants a film to be over two hours, or at least I don't. ~ Alexander Payne

At the moment, I'm toying with a new idea for a book, but fully engaged with writing screenplays, so the book idea - which needs empty space in my head - is barely formed yet. ~ Rose Tremain

If (when) she got back to her typewriter she'd begin these tongue-in-cheek screenplays over from the top, telling them with faith in the tale, not because every fantasy was absolutely true but because no reality ever was. ~ Clive Barker

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down. ~ Salman Rushdie