Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I took a lot of writing courses.
I think I've had my fill of electoral law.
I have absolutely no musical talent of my own!
I was alone a lot as a kid, because my parents were divorced.
Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.
I was a volleyball player as a kid. I played volleyball all the time.
Everything I've written up to now, hasn't had anything to do with my life really.
I wouldn't say I'm a political junkie. I follow it. I read a few articles every day.
I don't think there is anything more bitter in American politics than a close election.
Usually if a scene's really hard to write, I just don't write it. Nothing's coming to mind.
I don't use my writing career as a vehicle to get me acting work or to write roles for myself.
I studied voice for about two years with an amazing coach, and I never rose above the level of mediocre.
The auditioning process is one in which the actor gets very little information about almost every element of it.
To have a show have lawyers fighting civil rights cases week in and week out, I think it's exactly what we need.
I don't even know if people are familiar with my name as an actor. It's not as if I ever was an über-famous actor.
I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.
My goal isn't so much genre, or fact-based or not fact-based. I just want to work on projects that I think could be great.
I really want my career to be as an actor-writer-director-producer, you know? I don't know what will be stronger than the other.
I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know; they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.
Certainly, for me, and it's gone this way on every project I've worked on, the "writing" never ends until you're done with the movie.
I read an interview with Aaron Sorkin and he said he plays every part when he's writing. I thought, "Oh, I do that too! I'm doing okay."
I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero.
It seems to me that our presidential elections have turned more into a popularity contest than a real analysis about who really should be President of the United States.
I think most of America is seeing the strings behind the campaign, and sees the crass political maneuvers that people are making. I mean, they're extremely apparent to me.
I've found that sitting around and obsessing about projects moving forward, when there's actually nothing I can do about it, at a certain point, is really counter-productive.
In movies that tackle these political issues, there are far more interesting themes to be explored than partisan politics, which is what we get on cable news every second of every day.
People that work at the White House, they stay forever and love the job. Someone asked me, "Was there really a butler that was there for 40 years?" I said, "No, they're all there for 40 years."
My strangest auditioning experience was when I was reading for a TV show, and right when I started the audition, the casting director left the room and yelled at me from the hallway to keep reading.
I find that when people get a script, they know within five pages if the writer can write. Once you're five pages in, it doesn't matter whose name is on the cover, you're not even thinking about it.
Even from a really young age I was a huge movie buff - five, six, seven, eight. Just loved movies, but in a more in-depth way than most kids that loved movies at that time. I'd find a filmmaker or something and want to see all his movies.
I spent so many years of my life as a stage actor and when you do all these plays, a lot of really great plays are very politically driven. They deal with deep social issues, and that's the kind of stuff that I love, as an audience member.
Screenwriting is definitely the majority of my time, but I do still act when stuff comes up. I do a few jobs a year.People ask me that all the time about written something for yourself to star in, and it's strange. I just approach it as two separate careers.
I still recognized for television. Buffy is 70 percent, Gilmore Girls is 30 percent, and then Mad Men. If it's a mother/daughter, it's definitely Gilmore Girls. They usually say, "We always watch it together, and we feel like we're the Gilmore girls." I've heard that like, 5,000 times.
Little Christian Bale. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I re-watched it not too long ago, and my jaw just hit the floor. The whole time I was like, "Who wrote this? This is unbelievable." And then the credits came up at the end and it was Tom Stoppard, my favorite playwright. It's just an amazing piece of writing.
The exciting thing about today with the Internet, streaming, and YouTube, is you can just go do it. You can go make a short and put it up, and it, very well, may be seen. You can create your own Internet series and just put it out there. It wasn't like that when I was in my 20s. People weren't doing this sort of thing - now they can and they should try it.
I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations. There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive.
In the case of Game Change, the discussion in that film was how our politicians have become so much like celebrities - personality becomes more important than substance so that they can function in a 24-hour news cycle. So the question is, how do you feel about that? Is this what you want from a politician - somebody who's wildly charismatic, but has so little knowledge of substantive issues?
I'm very political. Because I read politics every day, so I'm familiar with the world. I approach the films is I'm trying to write what is true, so that supersedes partisan spin, in my opinion. I find partisanship is a thing for cable news and newspaper articles, but it's not interesting for art. I think we all believe what we believe, and I don't think a film is going to change someone's mind.
I had written four scripts before I wrote Recount. Each one progressed my career a little bit, but I didn't make a dime off any of them. Recount was the first thing I sold, and I actually sold it as a pitch to HBO. They bought it as a pitch, which was a miracle. I thought, "Wow, this could be the last time I'll be paid to write a script again, which would be too bad because that was an amazing experience I just had."
I started writing when I was 26, so I don't even know what year that was. I wrote a script for me to star in. A friend of mine, who was an actor that I would compete against a lot, had written a script and was taking all these meetings. He just kept pushing me and was like, "You got to do it. You're going to love it!" He's a very successful screenwriter now. His name is Michael Bacall and he wrote 21 Jump Street, Project X, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So it was a few factors.