I had done 17 drafts of ‘Heyy Babyy’ before the final screenplay emerged. It’s actually based on the wild lifestyle of a friend. In fact, when he saw ‘Heyy Babyy’ he threatened to sue me and said I’d better pay him royalty.
If you have a good story idea, don’t assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.
I wrote ‘Yellow Submarine’ for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for ‘The Games,’ about the Olympic Games. I wrote ‘Love Story,’ both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote ‘RPM’ for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson!
If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn’t be writing screenplays. I’d be writing novels.
For me, directing a film is like confining myself. I want to do something beyond direction. I can conceive stories, write screenplays, etc. That’s better for me.
Anyone can sit down and write two pages of a novel, then forget about it, and a week later write five pages of a screenplay, then forget about it, and a week later start another novel… etc, etc.
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.
I wrote a screenplay for a ‘Sweet Valley High’ adaptation, and it’s really amazing to me how many women who are my age have responded to the idea and are excited about the movie.
Laced with a unique narrative technique, racy screenplay and top notch production values, ‘Lie’ is a new cinematic experience.
If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I’ll step out. I’ll step back. I’d step back. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
In ‘Expendables 2,’ there was a lot of vulgar dialogue in the screenplay. For this reason, many young people wouldn’t be able to watch this. But I don’t play in movies like this. Due to that, I said, ‘I won’t be a part of that if the hardcore language is not erased.’
Language is never a problem when you have the screenplay ready.
The success of a film depends on the screenplay, and nothing else.
I’m a big fan of Woody Allen. I used to love the fact that he wrote his own screenplay and acted in the movie.
I don’t card out my screenplays ever. I just have an idea I just sit down and write I don’t edit.
For the film ‘Saat Khoon Maaf,’ which was adapted from my story ‘Susanna’s Seven Husbands,’ I did collaborate on the screenplay. I even took a small role in the film, of a priest.
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.
I have followers because of my dad. I get asked about his movies once a week. They want to know how he stays in shape and if he writes the screenplays.
I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.
If you play it straight it’s funny – the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.
I found, after the experience of making ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ and then returning to the blank page – because ‘Shaun Of The Dead’ was the first screenplay I ever wrote properly – the experience of returning to the blank page and having nothing in the drawer was intensely painful.
The simple idiot’s advice I give to screenwriters who say they want to sell a screenplay is, ‘Write good.’
The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.
Writing with a film in mind – writing like a screenplay – is a sureshot recipe for disaster.
Everyone in Hollywood has a screenplay.
There’s something about somebody’s first screenplay: it’s like their whole life experience has kind of been bottled into it. They bring so much richness to it. And not that they won’t do that for their next script, but there is something about their first experience and the time that it’s been floating in their head.
The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.
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.
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.
You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.
Normally you read a screenplay – and I read a lot of them – and the characters don’t feel like people. They feel like plot devices or cliches or stereotypes.
When I write a novel, I want it to be completely different from a screenplay. I’m very conscious of the difference, and I want novels to work purely as novels. Otherwise I don’t see how they’ll survive – why don’t we just all go to the movies or watch television.
‘Housefull’ is not a ‘leave your brains behind’ kind of a film. It has a very intelligent screenplay.
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.
As human beings, of course, we’re all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there’s room for me to express them, that’s a part I’d love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.
I would have killed to do ‘Beauty And The Beast’ at Warners, which went away. I would have killed to do ‘The Witches’ at Warners that went away. God knows there are many, many of them. All I can do is diligently do the screenplay, diligently do the design work, deliver a budget, and then await a decision.
Once I started writing the screenplay of ‘Bride & Prejudice,’ I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth.
Daring to make films of any kind and thus invite the possibility of ridicule was an internal battle of mine for many years as I worked on the screenplay for what would become ‘Dear White People’ beginning at the end of George W. Bush’s second term.
Think about ‘GoodFellas’: It could be a textbook on how not to write a screenplay. It leans on voice-over at the beginning, then abandons it for a while, then the character just talks right into the camera at the end. That structure is so unusual that you don’t have any sense of what’s going to happen next.
Overall, I feel that southern cinema, in itself, has taken over the film industry with its content, stories and screenplay.
My personal feeling is that ultra-high frame rates and ultra-vivid giant screen movies can be like a window onto reality. And if you recognize it as such, you can write your screenplay, direct your movie, edit it, and present it as a live experience – not like a movie.
With screenplays and teleplays, they are mapped, really, in the blueprint of a finished product, which is something you’re going to watch on a screen. But a book is an end to itself, really.
The screenplay has to be gripping. That’s when the film will work. Then, I see how much I can relate to the character I’m playing.
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.
If you create a fun environment, people will take liberties and grow and expand. And then you’ll get your final screenplay in my favorite style, which is ‘tossed away’ – as if the actor just thought of it.
Most screenplays depend primarily on the vision of a director.
I really just love to open a blank document and spew, whereas with a screenplay I have to be more judicious.
I expect ‘Paramasivan’ to be a big hit because I have given the screenplay a fresh approach.
‘Nuvvla Nenila’ is an out and out love entertainer. The screenplay of the film is very good and director Nakkina Trinadha Rao has handled the film superbly.
A movie is painting, it’s photography, it’s literature – because you have to have the screenplay – it’s music. Put a different soundtrack to a comedy and it’s a tragedy. A movie combines all those forms and forces you to pay attention for two hours with a group of people.
This is not a screenplay. I don’t do twenty drafts. I’m not going to show this to you until it’s published or accepted for publication. You can make whatever suggestions you want, but I probably will ignore them entirely.
In all my screenplays, I have been exploring various aspects of femininity.
Writing a really good screenplay is not easy. It can be a very punishing form.
If I want to write a movie, I’ll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it’s something that I think can only be done novelistically.
I’ve never read a screenplay in advance. You trust the artist.
After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few – but by January 2006, I wanted out.
