Story Script Decisions Quotes

I've told you many times that the first thing I decide is the kind of story I want. ( ... ) This is not the kind of story I want. The story we bought had shine and glow - it was a happy story. This is all full of doubt and hesitation. The hero and heroine stop loving each other over trifles - then they start up again over trifles. After the first sequence you don't care if she never sees him again or he her. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

As Frances Marion rose to accept the Academy Award for Screenwriting for her original story The Big House, she became the first woman writer to win an Oscar. Since 1917, she had been the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood - male or female - and was hailed as "the all-time best script and story writer the motion picture world has ever produced." Just forty and "as beautiful as the stars she wrote for," Frances was already credited with writing over one hundred produced films. ~ Cari Beauchamp

Improvisation comedy is a wonderful example of the kind of thinking that Blink is about. It involves make very sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment without the benefit of any kind of script or plot. That's what makes it so compelling and - to be frank - terrifying. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance. ~ Asif Kapadia

My character Milly in 'The Boy Who Could Fly' was a very strong part. There were dramatic moments, and there were humorous moments, too. The whole story with Eric Underwood's character was just wonderful, and the messages behind the script were very important to me. ~ Lucy Deakins

Jessica, falling in love can't always be a happily ever after or a once in a lifetime kind of story. Those happen in books, in movies. This is life and it's real. Life has no script, no outline. We broke the rules of love long ago. All I know for sure is that with you, the rules will never apply. ~ Kathryn Perez

If you want to change your story, you have to go back to the beginning and change the script ~ Kimmy Seltzer

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. ~ Pete Docter

Definitely the script because you want to be part of an interesting story, you want your character to be a challenge, then comes the director. But essentially it's the script first and whether it's a character that you think you can do. ~ Eric Bana

And so to tame Christmas we spin myths to temper the story, we create our own caricatures to speak our own lines into the script, we gift ourselves to enhance an adventure now lagging, and we think we're on a grand adventure when we've completely forgotten what an adventure is. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain. ~ Natalie Morales

I don't have any one way to tell a story. I don't have any rule book of how it's supposed to be done. But I've always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told, beginning, middle, and end, I'll tell it that way. I won't jigsaw it, just to show what a clever boy I am. I don't do anything in my script just to be clever. ~ Quentin Tarantino

The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie. ~ Maggie Carey

Our eyes are not viewers, they're also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script, and the working title is 'I'll never be enough' ~ Jim Carrey

I think that whenever there's a good script we try to make that happen, but it's all based off of a good story, a good script, but I don't believe you should do it just because it's African-American. ~ Kenneth Edmonds

You have the capacity to change the plot line of your life, even if you've been acting from the same script since before you can remember. No matter what has happened up to this point, you have the right and the capacity to be happy. You are an innately creative being, capable of writing a love story worth living. ~ David Simon

I'd like to do the young cadet thing again for sure, but that's why I wanted to do this, to see if I could do it. I took the scenes out of the script and put them together and read them as one little arc, story and that seemed to work. ~ Scott Speedman

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff. ~ Jason Bateman

I'm an optimist; I always hope that each new script is going to be a great story. ~ Viggo Mortensen

I always choose my projects for the script or what the director want to tell with that story. And if I like the story. ~ Elena Anaya

Well, you know, I never want to feel like I have a set plan of what I'm supposed to do. I kind of like to go script by script, and if I like the character and like the story that's why I want to do a movie. ~ Abigail Breslin

I prefer working, period. I think that I like doing film more just because when you get a script, you have the story from start to finish, so you can really find the character's arc, and when you walk away from it, you know you're sort of powerless to what happens. ~ Addison Timlin

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director. ~ Marion Cotillard

Essentially, I never know what I'm going to do until I read the script, but a good story is a good story. I would like to do more modern stuff, but ultimately, it doesn't matter to me - good stories are timeless. ~ Rupert Evans

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling. ~ Taylor Swift

I think that when you first read material or you first read a script or story and know you might be playing a part, it's important not to see yourself because it should be a challenge enough that it doesn't come easy. ~ Ansel Elgort

It's only the filmmaker. The script is really, really second. And there's a huge gap between filmmaker and script for me. I almost don't care about the story that they're telling; I really only care about who wants to tell it. ~ Brady Corbet

As a screenwriter - if you are completely honest with yourself - you can't help but admit that your greatest threat is the audience, where audience is not understood as a demographic category but as a character outside the script to whom the story is addressed. A good part of the drama necessary for uncovering the story resides in the conflict between the storyteller and his/her audience. Audience plays the part of antagonist to the writer's role as protagonist. The writer drives the action, which is forever complicated, frustrated and undermined by the audience's needs and sensibilities. Audience wants you to prove it. Audience has a chip on its shoulder, and doesn't give a damn. Audience has been there and done that in the guise of your mother, your father, your ex-, your worst enemy. Audience laughs at your stupidity and dares you to change its view of you and the story world that you would have it care about. Audience is defiant. It has your number. The only way you can defeat it is by carrying a bigger stick - your only defence is an inspired offence, namely the story. ~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

I never make conscious decisions. If my agent says to me, "It's a good script," I'll do it. I don't plan. I've got a lot of things to do. I'm at the roulette table and my luck seems to be running at the moment. I might as well stay there until it runs out. ~ Anthony Hopkins

Actors always want to know how I come up with interesting and creative takes on characters, characters that aren't like me as I appear in daily life and that aren't like each other. It's simple: I let the lines and images connect with my imagination. I don't worry about consistency; I let myself respond moment by moment, piecemeal, to the character's dialogue and actions. Then I let my responses take me wherever they go, making mistakes and discarding them until choices start repeating themselves on their own no matter how arbitrary they seem at first. Then I know I'm on to something. But I don't try to put the character together. I leave it in pieces. The script and story put the character together so my moment by moment performance seems like a creative take on the whole character. ~ Harold Guskin

You always have to write script with a budget in mind. Although it's always good to write the big story, you really have to think about how things are going to work as far as cast, effects and settings. It's a process. You have to always think budget and then execute and make it happen. ~ Harrison Smith

I had the advantage of reading the book, and when the script was first submitted to me, it was just another gangster story - the east side taking over the west side and all that. ~ Edward G. Robinson

The script is the foundation, but it's not the full story for the film, which only comes alive with the actors. ~ Mora Stephens

I read 'The Hobbit' while at school. It was OK; can't really remember too much from there, other than the fact I was 10! I never read it again until the script for the film, but it has to be an amazing story when you know Sir Peter Jackson has made three films out of it. ~ Mark Hadlow

People don't understand how much time and work it takes to make somebody laugh, and how hard it is to write a script, to put together the story, the characters. When everyone laughs simultaneously, there's no greater feeling. ~ Marlon Wayans

I remember reading the script for 'Dangerous Liaisons' and thinking that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life watching this film; the story and the writing were so wonderful. ~ Stephen Frears

The story also pointed out that most big cities and towns have chambers of commerce and economic development offices, but what makes Itasca unique, participants say, is a commitment to hard data and McKinsey-style analysis, as well as a willingness to depart from the script that drives many private sector lobbies. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Our world is a dream of the gods. Maybe they have other dreams. But all we have is this story unfolding, and in the script of this world, nothing's going to bring Altan back to life. ~ R.F. Kuang

For me, when my agents and reps send me a script, I read it through, just for the story purpose of it, and then I read it again to think of my character and see if it's something that I'm interested in bringing to life. ~ Dania Ramirez

I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I've read as an actor, and I'm a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact. ~ William Mapother

The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said. ~ Robert Carlyle

When I want to tackle a story or a subject, I always ask myself three questions: Is it important to talk about that? Will it interest other people than just me? Can I live with that for three or four years because that's how long it takes to do the project, to write the script, and to direct it, and then to do this. ~ Philippe Falardeau

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up. ~ Joe Shuster