They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I’d be sure to have some dough to support my family.
I get work because I’m primarily a novelist but I’ve become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.
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.
I would love to occasionally do English-speaking films, but the script is as important for me as the director.
The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.
The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn’t.
Improv plays such a huge role in finding great lines – you’ll be surprised at what comes out of your mind inadvertently. A lot of times it’s better than a script you’ve worked out ahead of time.
To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn’t call for it? That’s tough.
I look forward to every script that comes down the pike.
I would consider a half hour sitcom if the script was good.
Your instincts for what’s dramatic are the same whether you’re working on a drawing or on a script.
First, you do a piece of material that begins and ends and has a flow; it’s not chopped up as in a film, where in an extreme case you might be doing the last scene of the script the first day that you go to work, and you don’t know enough about the character you’re playing.
In ‘Law & Order,’ your main job is to stay out of the way of the plot. On another show you’d receive your script and see stuff that seems challenging and feel excited that the writers thought highly enough of you to write it for you.
I think it helps, as an actor, to never know when you’re going to get that next script and you’re done.
I’m probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don’t prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.
We did have a script, but it didn’t consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.
I read the script and try not to bring anything personal into it. I make notes, talk to the director and we decide what kinds of shades should be in the character.
I ideally would like to do three films every year. Every day, I pray for it. But I should like a script before I sign on a film.
With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.
I, of course, wanted to do something with Drew Barrymore. Please. So we were reading scripts back and forth and then we found this script, Fever Pitch.
The script is the coloring book that you’re given, and your job is to figure out how to color it in. And also when and where to color outside the lines.
I was deliciously happy filming ‘True Blood.’ I even kept all the scripts in my office, which I never do with any script. Although I did shred them all in one go when the series finished; it seemed like a ritual, somehow.
Script for an actor is like a bible. You carry it with you, you read it over and over, you go to your passages.
You know when you’ve found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.
At 19, while studying at St Xavier’s College and majoring in literature and sociology, I got my first job as a copywriter. It was at a company called the Script Shop.
All my characters have their own political thoughts of the world around. If it is not in the script, I put it into them so that they become rooted to the local flavour.
I think I remember from the offset I said, ‘I’ve visited this territory. This isn’t for me.’ And then I read the script and I said, ‘You know, this is completely something different. This is a whole new life.’
You make a decision whether you just work on the script and believe in every moment and pick out every moment, or if you sit down and memorize lines. Once you really dig into a script, learning lines becomes almost second nature.
This basic thing I always do: ‘What happened between the character’s birth, and page one of the script?’ Anything that’s not in the story, I’ll fill in the blanks.
And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives – they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.
You don’t necessarily need a script or actors to tell a compelling tale. Finding a person at a key moment in his life and rendering the truth as you see it – that’s the truest form of drama.
I believe that a good comic script can succeed despite being drawn badly, but that a bad script can’t be saved by good art. Of course, great writing and great illustration makes for a great comic 100 percent of the time.
Everyone can do a character the way they want to do it, unless the director tells them not to, which isn’t very common. I like to do my characters, if it’s not specific in the script, as myself.
I feel as though my career really hit its high point when I was cast as a supporting actress in ‘American Wedding’. I thought the script had a lot of depth and intelligence, and it really just jumped off the page.
Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.
After ‘Mohabbatein’, I had many offers and I met many people but I am always searching for that one script which would take me that one step ahead.
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.
I’ll read a script maybe twice, but I’ll think about the role more than I’ll rehearse lines.
I only sound intelligent when there’s a good script writer around.
I just arrive, they hand me a script and say, do it.
The thing is when you play a character it’s the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there’s gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it’s the personality that comes across.
It was, when I read it, I thought, such a beautiful script. I loved the story. I thought it was well handled. I thought it was even more moving because it was a true story and that made it even more poignant.
It’s never a script that makes me decide to accept a film or not.
I always think it’s interesting to switch genres, because if I read a script and I know exactly how to manifest a story, I don’t really want to do it anymore, because I’ve already done it in my head.
I get nervous before openings or premieres or when someone’s reading a new script, and I get nervous when my daughter isn’t in my immediate field of vision.
Every script I’ve written and every series I’ve produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.
I read that John Hughes script for ‘Mr. Mom,’ and I thought, ‘This guy is a funny writer.’ I went: ‘You ought to stick around and direct this thing.’ But he didn’t; he left, and look what he became. A really legendary comedy director.
I’m an optimist; I always hope that each new script is going to be a great story.
Most of the most successful films Blumhouse has made have been rejected by everyone else. No one wanted to make ‘Get Out.’ Nobody. Nobody wanted to make ‘The Purge.’ I think it was floating around for three years before it came to us. Nobody wanted to make ‘The Gift,’ when it was a script called ‘Weirdo.’
For me anyway, until I was exposed to doing improvisation and walking onto a stage without any script, I would have never felt comfortable enough to walk into a room with someone like Larry David and audition.
I’m always looking for a low-budget script with an interesting character to play.
With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.
I took the role because it’s rare to read a script that makes me laugh and cry, and it spoke to my own religious feelings, as well as giving me a chance to draw on my experience as a parent. Accepting it was a no-brainer.
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common – timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don’t get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I’m not acting; I’m just expressing myself.
