- If you're holding out to see your name in lights you're always going to be disappointed. The journey is two years minimum and you're names up there for two weeks at the very end ... if at all.
- Most directors are egomaniacs. Thats why they're directors. And most successful writers are masters of adaptation, so they can get along with pretty much anyone.
- Clearly anyone can write a great story if they have sufficiently vivid experiences to write about. My advice to young writers is get a life. Find out what fear, pain, exhaustion love and hunger really feel like. Then work out how to put that feeling in pictures.
- Being a screenwriter is like being a furniture maker. Every piece you make is different but there are only a few structures which work. You get to know at a glance if it will stand up or fall over.
- You know, this whole thing about the solitary tortured artist is nonsense I think. All the great creative people I know have become great precisely because they know how to get along with people and swim around in the communal unconscious.
- Less dialogue is generally more. Oddly, what people pay money to see at the cinema is the process of thought -- or rather their own thoughts and emotions reflected in the face of an actor.
- I think to be successful stories have to operate on the level of parable. They have to be a sort of philosophical discourse in disguise. To put it another way: if you don't have a theme you're sunk. Once you know the theme, you know exactly what you're doing. Sometimes you don't get it till the second or third draft, but once you know it changes everything.
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