But it’s the particularity of a place, the physical experience of being in a place, that makes it onto the page. That’s why I don’t just do library research. I very rarely write about somewhere I haven’t been.
I read a lot of scripts, so I know by page 25 if I like it or not.
I wouldn’t say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page.
I’ve got a Facebook page, but I’ve never put anything on it. I’ve got a presence on all the social networks, in fact, but I’ve never once sent a message. I’m there because, otherwise, someone’s going to pretend to be me.
I don’t like how women’s bodies are Page 3 news. I just don’t think that’s big news. Women’s bodies are women’s bodies, and that’s that. And I love to see beautiful – the female form in great art and great photography.
It’s very difficult sometimes having bands, you know, when all the members aren’t on the same page.
One must go for a film with an open mind; a film best impacts you when your mind is a blank page to the film.
The concept of Kimye has more cultural significance than what Page Six could write.
When I was a playwright earlier in my career – my senior project in high school was my first produced play – I used to put on the title page: ‘A tragedy with laughs.’
The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won’t start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.
Merely that I have a World Wide Web page does not give me any power, any abilities, nor any status in the real world.
Auditions are an opportunity to play and go in there and bring the character to life. The writers have it stuck in their head and haven’t seen it jump off the page.
To tell you the truth, I don’t edit much at all. Most times, when I have finished the first draft, that’s the book. Of course, I work on the page I am on until I am happy with it. I might even say that I try to state the landscape.
Ever since I began to compose, I have remained true to my starting principle: not to write a page because no matter what public, or what pretty girl wanted it to be thus or thus; but to write solely as I myself thought best, and as it gave me pleasure.
I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page.
And then lo and behold IBM, Apple and Motorola took an ad in all the newspapers, double page ad, and said, announcing the chip that they were now able to manufacture it and that they were going to kill Intel.
I remember my mom saying to me that what your friends do is one thing, but what you do could be on the front page of the paper.
I like the idea that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It’s probably what I love most about writing – that words can be used in a way that’s like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around.
You have to look for story. That’s obvious. If that’s not on the page, you can forget it. But I also read whatever character I’m being offered. And if you can cut them out without it affecting the story, then I say no straight away.
Sylvia Plath, Rumi, there’s a lot of spoken word poets who do a really incredible job putting their spoken work into page poetry – that’s what I strive to do.
Social media, for all of its limitations, is rarely irrelevant. The stream of updates on your Facebook page, for instance, is algorithmically engineered to be darn-near irresistible.
Certainly as a director you want to be working with people who are on the same page as you and that you can trust and get along with.
When I did plays in high school and college, I never remember memorizing my lines, but once I had blocking, I had all my lines memorized. Once I had movement associated with words, it was fine. Before I had blocking, it was just text on a page. Once it became embodied, it was much easier.
Meetings get a bad rap, and deservedly so – most are disorganized and distracted. But they can be a critical tool for getting your team on the same page.
A lot of the girls my age were impressed by silly stuff like money and fame. I wanted to be able to have intellectual and spiritual conversations with someone who was on the same page as me.
Meaning comes from the capacity to see what is not in some simple, objective sense there on the printed page.
I think authors like me are always struggling with the idea that they should have a brand and a Facebook author page and they should get Twitter accounts. I don’t know what to do with them.
I think everyone’s different but in comedy, I try to do my scene to make the director and the other actors laugh. If I can make them laugh and we have the same sensibility, then I’m on the right page.
I think when I’m drawing, I’m seeing what’s happening on the page almost as if it were unfolding like a movie in my head.
Sometimes I read a script and it’s obvious from early on that it’s one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.
I admired Eugene McCarthy’s courage and although I left his Senate staff after four years to accept a job as the researcher on the editorial page of the ‘Washington Post,’ I remained an admirer.
With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.
I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I’m perhaps too timid to do in real life.
I am a little old fashioned, and I love to have my scripts printed out. There is something magical about feeling the paper, making notes and page marks.
I sublimate different parts of my personality through my characters. Which is worrying, as some of them can be a bit nasty. I’m pleased the stuff on the page isn’t inside me any more.
Some things that I write, you’ll see a page with cartoon pictures or a drawing of a car – like a Ford – or a flag. I still do it on an occasion when a word is strange to me.
I’ve worked on all sorts of things, like the sci-fi stuff for Vin Diesel, where the script is numbered and is in unphotocopy-able colours and your name is stamped into every page. And it doesn’t really help because it creates a false sense of specialness about the thing.
Basically, we convert the entire Web into a big equation, with several hundred million variables, which are the page ranks of all the Web pages, and billions of terms, which are the links. And we’re able to solve that equation.
Everyone feels at times like they’re missing a page or two out of the handbook that tells you how to live your life.
I had the pleasure of working for ‘The Late Show’ with O’Brien when I was an NBC page at 30 Rockefeller Center, and it was always so much fun.
Being an actor all of my life is kind of a collaborative, social form of interpretive art. Sitting down with a blank page every day by yourself is a different feeling.
You can give some kind of spark of life to a comic that a photograph doesn’t really have. A photograph, even if it’s connecting with you, it seems very dead on the page sometimes.
When I think about the books I’ve written, it probably takes 150,000-200,000 words to get a 50,000 page book. Highlighting something and hitting Cmd-X is second nature.
I don’t have any sense of an audience when I’m writing. I don’t consider the audience. Because all I’m interested in is the problem on the page.
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.
Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It’s always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn’t expect.
I’ve read the last page of the Bible. It’s all going to turn out all right.
There’s lots of sins in this life. We’re all sinners. If you don’t believe in God and you don’t believe in the scriptures, then we are on a different page.
There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
Television can be a little tricky in terms of finding roles that feel fully flushed out, which is why I love being in the theater so much, because the roles tend to be really on the page.
The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it’s very limited in what it can do logically. It’s an existential experience – there and then gone.
This union has been divided in like a civil war – brother against brother – sister against sister. And I’m pulling it together. We’ve already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.
The publisher has told – you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.
