They’re still working on the script – they’ve got to get that nailed down and they want the first movie to come out obviously, not get too ahead of themselves. But yeah, it’s looking good. I love the second book a lot as well, so kind of diving into that is awesome.
I still take work if I think it’s good. If I like the script, I’ll do it. If I don’t, I won’t.
Every movie you attack has its challenges, and I was excited about the challenges presented by ‘Deadpool.’ I was a huge fan of the original, and I think, as a director, you have to put the script first.
You don’t improvise with a Cameron Crowe script.
Ensure that your script is watertight. If it’s not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.
The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else’s script.
You look at the part in ’12 Years A Slave,’ you finish that script – I mean, it’s a powerful story. You go, ‘Man, I have to play a bad character in this.’ And then you go, ‘Well, do I want to play a bad character and contribute to a good story?’
The final product in a play is not just the written word. It’s the production, the performance. The script is, of course, a very important piece; but it’s only one element. Ultimately, yours is one of several voices. People can change your work in a play for better or worse.
Now it’s a fully realized production but for the fact that we’re holding our scripts in our hand and some of us used them, and some of us didn’t and you have to by union rules hold the script. You don’t have to use them but you gotta hold them.
I prefer doing strong roles irrespective of duration, and it is almost impossible for me to take up a role that has nothing much to contribute to the script.
There is always something funny going on between scenes with Adam Sandler. He’s always cracking jokes and yelling at people for no reason. It’s pretty funny. He’ll joke around during scenes, too. When he guest-starred on ‘Jessie,’ there was nothing in the script that he said first take.
Almost every script that I’ve gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven’t chosen them. All the ones I have chosen are because I’ve been fascinated with the source material or because of the script.
I did three or four weeks of work on ‘Godzilla;’ it wasn’t a page-one rewrite or anything like that. The term is ‘script doctoring,’ is what I did on it.
Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.
If you have a script that’s not great, if you have a great director, you can make a great movie, but if you have a great script with a director who’s not good, never are you going to have a good movie.
What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were – and still are – condescended to by the English.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
I read the ‘Kapoor & Sons’ script in a half hour, forty five minutes. Not because I skimming through it… I read it like a book. By the end, I was blown away. I picked up the phone and said, ‘This script is gold.’
As an actor, there are many confusing factors that can make you take or not take a decision. It becomes difficult. Your first and last checkpoint should be the story. I always read a script as an audience.
Sometimes you see things in a script, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the director sees the same things. And if you think you’re going to be making a different film, then that’s not gonna work.
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don’t know.
It’s intriguing to me, when I see a horror script, or something like that, that’s actually original. I think that’s why I love ‘Stranger Things,’ because it’s not just horror, it’s everything, and when they use horror it’s right.
We had a script that was really solid and we knew how we were going to shoot and how the energy of it was going to go. So it gave us a lot of freedom to use the camera as a character.
Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn’t going to give you any more money.
I was told once that I didn’t play the Hollywood game, and that’s why I wasn’t a big star. What they meant when was that I don’t go to parties, and when I go to an audition and I don’t like the script, they know it.
I need to push myself. I’m not saying that I just want to do anything that’s shocking, but when you have that combination of a script that’s really beautiful and extremely shocking, it’s exciting for me.
As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I’m interested I’ll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision.
I think if you get your fifth script made, that’s the fast track. But there’s no guarantee any of them will get made.
You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.
I’d love to work in the States; I’d love to work anywhere where you get a good script and a good part to play. But I do love British film as well.
If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you’re turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.
Well, obviously I was excited by the idea that Woody Allen was going to direct it. But at the same time, the script itself and the character was really interesting.
You have to trust that the script is right and be comfortable with everything, and then you just have to go for it and disregard anything you’ve previously heard or felt about it.
I felt alive when I read a script and acted out a scene, or sang a song. It was my dream. I’m just very lucky that I’m still doing it and able to earn a living from it.
I think with the smaller-scale projects, the burden for success falls more squarely on the shoulders of the actors and the director and the script.
A good script and a good brief from the director is enough to let me know what is expected of me.
Rock is all about writing your own script; it’s all about pioneering.
You stick to the script, the script is Bible.
High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I’d heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script.
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, ‘It’s in the script.’ If he says, ‘But what’s my motivation?, ‘ I say, ‘Your salary.’
I keep an open mind when a script is narrated to me.
The bottom line is, it’s a great script and that’s very inspiring and makes you want to overcome whatever technical difficulties you come up against.
I like it when you read a script and there’s the part that you show to the other characters and then there’s the part that only the audience knows.
I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don’t play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy – you just play a person.
I want to work with great directors. I’ve picked films based on the script or the character and seen them collapse because the directors were not strong visionaries.
It’s hard to find a play that’s right for me to do. Rather than waiting around for the right script to come along, I decided to write one myself.
All of a sudden, those few pages of script that he had shown me with the weird images I could visualize all of that in my brain, and I knew that there was this mad little genius at work here and I really wanted to do the film.
After I script the movie, I have to storyboard it out, I have to budget it, and I have to understand if I can afford all those visual effects or not.
It so depends on each script, because you can say… I always thought I wouldn’t have wanted to do something that was kind of like as big and commercial as ‘The Dark is Rising,’ but I really liked the script. I thought it was really clever.
I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That’s what I’m up against – I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren’t written black.
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.
It’s always about trying to make everything go with the music, like a script. It’s not like, ‘Let’s have a confetti gun!’ If I ever have one of those, it will be because it’s absolutely the right thing at the moment in the song. I can’t just go get a confetti gun.
I like to stand in my kitchen with the script on a counter that’s about chest high. Usually I do something else at the same time – make a chicken or slice vegetables – and all day long I just read it over and over and over.
