I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.
But when you’re writing a script – for me anyway – you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.
When I was eight or nine, I wrote a new version of ‘Peter Pan’ for the school play. They didn’t use it – I imagine it was unperformable – but as recompense for not doing my script, I was offered any role, and instinctively went for Captain Hook. I came on trying to be terrifying, but everyone laughed at me.
These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.
I have a tendency to say yes to a script or no to a script. Not yes based on a rewrite.
I mean, the first ‘Back to the Future’ is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story.
Most actors really love it, that’s what they want to do. They burn to do it. And so they’ll read a script and think, that’s an interesting part. And because they love acting, that blinds them to the fact that the rest of it is pretentious nonsense, which it very often is.
I always choose my projects for the script or what the director want to tell with that story. And if I like the story.
I don’t watch scary movies. Sometimes, even having to read the script and do an episode of ‘Grimm,’ I get a little tense because I know someone’s going to jump out of somewhere.
You can’t fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.
Together with script writers Sid Green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.
As for tweeting and texting: impassioned discussions, particularly when they’re intimate, don’t work in abbreviated script messages. No relationship should begin or end in 140 characters.
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
Personally when I listen to a script, I think from the audience’s point of view. I would ask myself whether they would like to see me in this role?
As an actor, you really want to respect and honor the script. You want to try to be in the moment and you also realize that you’re one part of a bigger picture and when they call action, you have your dance.
They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don’t get it. It’s surprising.
For me, being an actress, my responsibility is not to pay attention to all the noise around me and to pay attention to the script and the director and protect the character and try to tell her story the best I can.
I love ‘Safe Men.’ Now it’s getting all this culty kind of – it just came out on DVD. That was awesome. I read that script, I never laughed so hard in my life.
I don’t see how it’s a risky thing to take a great part with a great director and a great script. That, to me, is not really a dangerous, risky proposition. It’s actually a really good choice.
I guess people feel that if you’re working with good directors and are known in the Hindi film industry, then you won’t work in South films. However, I believe that films have no boundaries of language, religion, or cast. If it’s a good script and a good director, I can do a film in Spanish as well.
Every now and again, a script comes along that you just can’t put down, and ‘Deep State’ is exactly that – a great example of the best kind of writing.
My Brilliant Career was beautifully directed, but I had a bit of trouble with myself in it. It was a silly script, based on a book this 16-year-old girl wrote.
When James Cameron brought me the script, which I developed with both Cameron and Jay Cocks, I wanted to make it a thriller, an action film, but with a conscience, and I found that it had elements of social realism.
When I got the script for Memento, I read it and I got killed off on page one and I fired my agent.
When Raghavendra Rao garu approached me to do a film on Lord Venkateswara, my initial response was ‘What more can we do than Annamayya?’ But he asked me to go through the script, and I really liked it.
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.
I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don’t necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.
Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn’t always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.
All we did in Alabama was have a read through with the script, but there was, ‘No, well, it needs more. You’ve got to do this, Albert. You’ve got to do that, Jessica.’ It didn’t feel like that at all.
I was 15 when I read the script for ‘Earth to Echo.’ I thought it was amazing, and I couldn’t think of turning it down. It’s awesome for a kid from Brooklyn to have an opportunity to be on the big screen. And I had a great experience learning what the movie business is like. So, I’m glad I did it.
You can trust a Neil Simon script. Every dot. Every dash; that pause means something. He takes all the jokes out, practically.
If it were all in the script, why make the film?
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.
It’s madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.
When I read the script, I liked the script very much and I thought it was a marvelous part for her, because I think it is a change of pace. I mean, we know how wonderful she is in romantic comedy.
Me and Johnny Rotten have been talking about doing a movie of his book, No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks. We have a script, so hopefully that’s going to happen at some point in our careers.
As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.
In daytime, you’re shooting an episode a day, which is on average about 90 pages of script a day. That is very hectic. On ‘90210,’ you get to work through it a little more. You’re not just flying through it just to get it done.
I love TV, don’t get me wrong. But with film, you’re just banging out this one product and you’re not waiting on another script. You have your script. It’s great, in that way.
There was one film that I really wanted. This was a long time ago; it was a film called ‘Fracture.’ Ryan Gosling ended up doing it with Anthony Hopkins. It wasn’t a giant box-office success, but I really enjoyed the script, and I enjoyed the character. I got pretty close and was kind of disappointed it didn’t go my way.
It’s just I hate reading the description ‘offbeat’ about a character in a script, because I, along with Seth Green, Jamie Kennedy and a few others, have cornered the market on ‘offbeat.’
I dropped the script in the fireplace, called my agent and said, they can jail me, sue me, but I’m never acting again, unless I can do something worthwhile.
You read a script and its based on ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’, and it goes right in the bin.
Consciously picking the right script after a long period of wait helped me grab a perfect film in the rom-com genre.
When I get a script, it’s the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That’s the first and only time.
I am a quick study – I can memorize a script in an hour – but I can’t remember a name three seconds. I’ve even forgotten my wife’s name on occasion.
I read every script from beginning to end, and I read every draft that I can. I like the show, I like the character, and I want to protect both of those things.
Things have got to add up to 100 points. The script is part of it, the character is part of it, the people I’m working with is the third part of it – and any combination of the three has got to add up to 100 points.
You’d go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until you went on the air.
Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.
I sketched out a rough story for them and the director said, well it’s a good story but we have the go-ahead from Universal to make this script and did I want to do it. I said no, and they left.
