Screenplay Quotations

'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs.

I've written a screenplay that is a series of monologues and songs; they form this sort of human tapestry across time and place. The form is strange, but I find it really fascinating.

I wrote 'Yellow Submarine' for the Beatles. I wrote the screenplay for 'The Games,' about the Olympic Games. I wrote 'Love Story,' both the novel and the screenplay. I wrote 'RPM' for Stanley Kramer. Plus, I wrote two scholarly books and a 400-page translation from the Latin, and I dated June Wilkinson!

In doing the screenplay for 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' the most important thing for me was to constantly go back to wherever the opposition would argue. So I had to keep reading all the books and articles about why McCarthy is such a good guy.

The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience.

Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important.

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver.

'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.

I found the structure of writing a screenplay harder than the structure of writing an essay. But it was definitely challenging to force myself to sit and write. I'm not used to having to force myself to work.

I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can't follow the form of the novel. It's a different thing completely. It's impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.

Whatever you want to do in the industry, do it on the smallest level at first. If you want to be a writer, write a screenplay in your house. If you want to be an actor, put on a one-man show. If you want to be a stand-up comedian, go to an open mic.

There's this inherent screenplay structure that everyone seems to be stuck on, this three-act thing. It doesn't really interest me. To me, it's kind of like saying, 'Well, when you do a painting, you always need to have sky here, the person here and the ground here.' Well, you don't.

I would like Albert Brooks to have received the Oscars for best actor, best director and best screenplay for 'Modern Romance.' I love that movie.

The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.

It's much like writing a screenplay with someone else and that's how we view it, I think.

The problem with the screenplay is that it's not literature, and it's not a film. It's a very weird, technical kind of blueprint that will be absolutely transformed into something else that is not that, you know? Honestly, a screenplay is no literature.

Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard.

We did a video for the song "No One Special" on the CD, which my wife wrote the screenplay and directed. We haven't thought about it. We had an old one on VHS that came out a while back. As far as a new one, we aren't doing that right now.

Much like he had an opportunity to work with Puzo and kind of evolve the book into a screenplay - which obviously required some modification to what Puzo had done - I just hope that he respects that we were targeting a different customer and we're trying to keep this fiction alive. The book's a great book; the movie's Academy Award winning; and hopefully the game will get a tremendous amount of acclaim as well. Just respect each of those works for what they are, I think that's the best way for us all to look at it.

My back went out and I gained 40 pounds while sweating over 'Perestroika.' It was incredibly hard, the hardest thing I had to do before the screenplay to 'Lincoln.'

I worked over the last year and a half with a Hollywood screenwriter named Mark Shepherd. He developed a screenplay out of the story. It's incredible; I hope that it can be made into a movie soon. Our agency is shopping it around Hollywood. I think it's going to be an incredibly powerful film. It starts with one part, and then we have plans for a sequel as well.

With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.

I wrote the screenplay for 'This Is Where I Leave You' - all 40 drafts of it.

Benjamin was an instrumental music major, and the project started with a composition, and the screenplay was something that mushroomed from that. When this opportunity came up, we encouraged them to see the project continue on.

Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts - works just as good for a 'N.Y. Times' op-ed as a screenplay or a short story.

First of all, we wanted to be faithful to the two books that inspired Jose Rivera's screenplay and to the spirit of the original journey.

The screenplay is not much different than the script for the touring stage play. I helped the film director to cast the roles and I made some script changes during the filming. As it turned out, the actors who performed the touring stage play in Albuquerque were also cast in the movie.

I've only done some work on (the screenplay), and I find it very difficult, actually. Because you can really get away with murder in a book. You write 'round so many things, you can describe people, you can explain things. A screenplay is actually very short. It is only, like, 110 pages long and it's very spread out and every line has to do so many jobs, so I found it really hard.

A novel, of course, is a fully self-contained work of art. You pick it up off the shelf, open it, and there it is - a whole universe waiting for you to enter. A screenplay is just a blueprint for making a movie. Until the movie is actually filmed, the script really means nothing.

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on.

A screenplay is really a blueprint for something that will be filmed. Therefore you must always keep in mind that whatever you write is going to be staged, for real.

A screenplay is like a cookbook, ... You need the chef and staff to turn it into something the consumer can get his arms around.

A screenplay adaptation of my 'Punktown' novel 'Health Agent' has been making the rounds. The screenplay was written by my friend, singer/songwriter Walter Egan of 'Magnet & Steel' fame!

The brain needs to have a story; it needs to have a logical screenplay telling where we're coming from and what we're going to.

I took the screenplay to the pub with me one Sunday afternoon and started reading it. By about page 60 I was weeping into my pint of lager. I was very moved by it and laughing out loud as well.

It started out very innocently for us, ... In the first place, you don't imagine you're ever really going to sell the novel to anyone or really sell the screenplay to anyone.

It's pretty much the best original screenplay I've ever read, for a start. Then there's the team - they're a fantastic group of people.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

I wanted to be as site-specific as possible. I said to each actor, 'I want you to talk about things you know about.' There's a screenplay but the goal was to incorporate as much of them into the characters as possible.

Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth.

In many ways, the screenplay really took me back to the original 'Rocky,'

In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.

I'm kind of in the dark. All I know is that the screenplay is finished.

I personally don't think anybody should be allowed to write a screenplay UNTIL they are over 40. It used to be don't trust anyone over 30; now it is don't hire anyone over 30. I wish I were joking.

I guess the first screenplay of mine that was done was 'Falling in Love' with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep.

I don't want to write any more screenplays, I'll tell you that right now. It's a waste of time. You've got too many people who think they have the answer to a good screenplay and they don't. No one knows.

For one year, Davis continued to have discussions directly with actors and comedians regarding signing with Davis to produce and perform his screenplay, ... offered funding through an investor to produce the screenplay for video distribution.

The hardest single thing you do is get the bloody screenplay right.

The last person they expected to connect with a screenplay was the comedic, blonde actress with the funny voice.