In many ways, it’s easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.
I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can’t follow the form of the novel. It’s a different thing completely. It’s impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.
I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, ‘Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.’ It would seem like it was a hometown boy just wanting to be home.
Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.
You’re torn between wanting to fill in all the spaces and knowing that’s really going to screw up the screenplay. And yet, how are you going to communicate it to people who really don’t understand the process?
As a writer of both novels and screenplays, I can say that screenwriting is a vastly rewarding creative life – if you fight hard enough to do it on your own terms. Whether I write books or not, my screenwriting life has been creatively rewarding and remains so.
While I filmed the ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ series for eight and a half years, I had never had much time to read, except for screenplays of the episodes.
I don’t begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don’t mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
A stage play requires very different craft from a book, fiction or otherwise, and ditto from a screenplay.
I really hate people that spoil stuff by putting scripts online. I don’t mind so much people that do movie spoilers when the movie is out in the theater. If you haven’t gotten there the first weekend, it’s on you to not read reviews or anything. But to put up screenplay reviews just kills me.
Writing a screenplay is daunting for sure, but I think that Hollywood needs them, so if you can manage to do that, there’s certainly a value within it.
I know firsthand how much work has usually gone into a screenplay, so if there’s something that rings false or a line that I would think would need a tweak or something, I will think long and hard before I even recommend changing it. In that sense, I’m very faithful to the scripts that I get – if they’re good scripts.
I’ve written about 15 screenplays and they all sold – they were all sold on pitches.
I’ve written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays.
I’ve been working with a lot of people out in Hollywood on writing scripts, screenplays, directing, producing, and making music.
Political consequences have never really come into my thinking. I didn’t think about it when we made ‘Maurice’ or when I said first I would co-direct and then write the screenplay of ‘Call Me’. I was just making something I thought I would enjoy creating.
After I sold my screenplay adaptation of ‘Rain Fall’ to Sony Pictures, I had no more creative involvement.
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.
I think screenplay is hard. I’ve tried that, and it felt really difficult; like, all the stuff I think I’m good at, like description and internal experience and memory, you can’t do that – or, at least, I couldn’t figure out a way.
With ‘Moreau,’ it’s been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.
If I’m feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone’s thing.
Reviewers are entitled to say if they liked the screenplay, performance, and execution of a film or not. But when they say things like the film doesn’t cater to a certain audience, it leaves people wondering if they should watch it.
In my office in Florida I have, I think, 30 manuscript piles around the room. Some are screenplays or comic books or graphic novels. Some are almost done. Some I’m rewriting. If I’m working with a co-writer, they’ll usually write the first draft. And then I write subsequent drafts.
If I can’t finish a screenplay, if I can’t get to the last page as a writer, it probably means it’s not a good movie for me to make.
I can work a lot faster when I’m writing a screenplay than when I’m writing a play because, if I’m having a problem with a scene or something, I can just be writing it in a way where there’s no dialogue, or find a way to make sound do the work that I want to do or a close-up do the work that I need to do.
Any story, any screenplay can only happen if the whole unit is professionally working towards it.
Passage of time can be mind-numbing to figure out in a screenplay. It’s the easiest thing to do in prose, not just by writing ‘four years later’, but you can shift time in a sentence or two.
The best way for a beginner to write for animation is to closely watch animated films, then read the screenplays for them afterwards.
I like working with south Indian directors because they are very disciplined. They visualize their entire story and screenplay in their heads even before they start shooting, which I respect. They finish their work on time. Being a disciplinarian myself, this suits my style.
I’ve come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that’s what I do primarily now.
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.
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.
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.
I just admire people like Woody Allen, who every year writes an original screenplay. It’s astonishing. I always wished that I could do that.
It is very challenging to make a fresh screenplay based on a used plot.
For me, if Shakespeare was around today, he’d be writing screenplays – a big Hollywood movie.
In my screenplays – from the very beginning I’ve always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.
I’m married to a nurse, and she is really, really ardent that – in screenplays or movies that I’ve worked on, that all the medical aspects be properly presented. I think that filmmakers ought to be respectful of all fields and not just be lazy and put nonsense in movies because most people won’t know the difference.
I remember when I read the screenplay for ‘Sicario,’ I fell in love with it, but at the same time, I went, ‘Oh no, not again.’ I mean, I would love to fall in love with something that is more light, like a rom-com or a comedy. I would love to. Because it’s very demanding to go to dark places like this.
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.
I’m developing some screenplays at the moment with my Australian producer.
Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character’s voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.
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.
If you are thrilled about a screenplay, execution never becomes a problem, so that’s the way I have achieved 75 films.
Film isn’t a meritocracy; there’s no system ensuring the best screenplays get produced. It’s a hustle.
I feel that one of the fields that I need to learn a lot is screenwriting. I used to write my own screenplays, but it’s just that I remember that at that time, I was saying to myself, ‘I wish one day I will meet a screenwriter that will help me because I feel that I need to learn.’
I recently found out that the print of my first film ‘Utrada Rathri,’ released in 1978, is damaged beyond repair. So the only way to relive earlier films is through books based on the screenplay.
I am greatly impressed with the BBC’s TV adaption of Charles Dickens’ ‘Bleak House.’ The costumes, the sets, the acting and the screenplay are all superb. Every episode is riveting.
When I graduated college I needed to make money while I was pursuing acting, so I read screenplays and made a living writing coverage on them for studios.
I couldn’t read a screenplay without puking.
I write screenplays in the middle of the night.
