Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My advice is that it's easier to write than direct. If you have an interest in writing, write. You might as well start with yourself or some event you know well, and you need a point of view.
Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.
I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.
So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.
When an accident or a crime happens, there's a period of time before the yellow tape goes up, before the official response becomes formalized. That allows the nightcrawlers to get very close.
Words, isolated in the velvet of radio, took on a jeweled particularity. Television has quite the opposite effect: words are drowned in the visual soup in which they are obliged to be served.
It's not easy to strap yourself down to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know you can direct lots of films, because directing films is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn't.
To have a second movie that you're proud of and that actually turned out the way you wanted, shot by shot, I realize I'm probably going to be able to do this for a little while for my living.
Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation, sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm, where it's OK to fail - a kind of home, I suppose.
I've always loved science fiction, fantasy, manga, comic books; so I guess, to some degree, those things influence my personal idea of what looks nice, which definitely isn't everyone else's.
Yeah, I think that's it... It's like Jesse James. He became really popular because he lasted so long. You know, there is some degree of truth to the fact that time will dignify anything, too.
Awards shows have devolved into self-parodies - liberals in limos, corny insider jokes delivered by the hosts among bad teleprompter reading from the some of the best thespians on the planet.
The goal is always about the next story. It's always about the thing I haven't done before. It's about learning, or it's about becoming better, and it's about whatever story grabs hold of me.
After college, rather than pursue real work, I joined a folk group and sang in coffee houses and nightclubs, an occupation that does little for the intellect and even less for the complexion.
Right after we invaded Iraq, I put a sign on my lawn that said "War is not the answer." That sign was either defaced, ripped up, or stolen every week. I had to replace that sign twelve times.
My next film is always shaped by the last one... by the things I feel I didn't get right, or the things I like and want to try to develop further, but it always comes out of the last picture.
Somehow, some way, incredibly enough, good writing ultimately gets recognized. If you're a really good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read.
I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on 'Welcome Back, Kotter.' And Ron did not write me back, but Bette Davis did.
I've been a writer since I was a kid. I've been a writer since I was, you know, dictating stories into a tape deck and trying to get my mom to type them up - when I was really, really little.
'Slumdog Millionaire' is a fairy tale, but it starts in a place you really believe, and that came from spending two months wandering around the slums picking up stories and talking to people.
When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. My movies are very close to what I set out to do. And I'm super-opinionated about what I do and don't like.
We were always around my dad, so he wasn't absentee at all. I don't think it was normal, but it was exciting. You always had lots of creative people around, and my parents took us everywhere.
With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.
I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.
You know that when you suggest something on the page, it's going to be there, plus more. It's a great luxury to know that you don't have to push it. You just lay it out, and it will be there.
What about the accusation that Hollywood is trying to advance its liberal agenda? Well, the fact is, while the creative community admittedly leans left, Hollywood has become a corporate town.
I got into writing to become a 'Star Trek' writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to.
The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.
To me, the ultimate crime in an adaptation is the crime of reverence. A novel is one form of media, a screenplay is another, and a movie is yet another. There's even reverence to a screenplay.
I don't know too many people who, when the TV announcer says, 'Viewer discretion is advised', then turn the TV off. Those are code words for, 'Turn the sound up; this is gonna be really good.'
A number of years ago, I found a book of photography by Weegee; he was a crime photographer in the 1930s in New York. He was the first person to put a police scanner in a car and drive around.
I've been watching 'American Idol' since its debut season in 2002. Back then, America hadn't yet evolved into a gladiatorial cybernation of bloggers, tweeters, and self-ordained voice coaches.
I love the true life stories and the biopics - people say I'm pigeonholed, but it's a fantastic kind of pigeonhole - but it's tough to then go and direct it because I know all the real people.
The great networks are there to prove that ideas can be canned like spaghetti. If everything ends up by tasting like everything else, is that not the evidence that it has been properly cooked?
I was too lazy to read, and I was even too lazy to imagine scenarios drawn up by the pictures. They just suggested a flavor to me. I swallowed them whole, like hosts. It was a form of worship.
This voting thing is actually beautiful. Not just necessary - it's a wonderful thing and it makes you powerful. And we've forgotten that in the most negative [president's] campaign in history.
It's about a young girl who will stop at nothing to be the valedictorian of her class. It's very dark and very wicked, but it's got a great part for a kid, and a great part for an older woman.
I love that as a theme for women: Stop standing by! You've got to make stuff happen! You've got to create your own world because if you let other people do it, they're going to just screw you.
I got so lucky on my 'Red Widow' cast. It was just the universe looking out for me that I got those actors. It's a big ensemble cast, a very international cast. I don't know how that happened.
I just always try to find an interesting story and tell it well. That's a hard enough thing to do, whether it's a piece of fiction or it's a small piece of reality. I just look for good story.
The wrong one will start saying things like "withdraw with honor." We've heard phrases like that before, and they led to thousands and thousands of deaths. Democrats always want to look tough.
I'm a filmmaker, and I was most influenced by Hitchcock's films. How he could plant such deep enriched characters and then make us care both about the antagonist and protagonist was masterful.
You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to.
We tend to see films as artifacts of one mind. The reality of it is, I think, when you come out here and start working, you have to learn pretty quickly that it's a very collaborative process.
I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer.
Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.
I met soldiers coming back from war and I was impressed by their description of PTSD, all the symptoms: the outburst of violence, the impossibility to cope with reality anymore, all that stuff.
Look, it's a mainstream animated movie, and how often are those considered thought provoking? It's meant to be a great time at the theater, but it's also designed to work on more than one level
I think it's pretty obvious that women's stories are not necessarily being told in Hollywood and women are not necessarily being put in the leadership positions they deserve in mainstream film.
T-shirts and long pants make me easier to find in a crowd, but also easy to disappear in a crowd because if I am wearing this and suddenly I am not, it's like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.