Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've got one outlet now - music - and it's great to be able to sign someone that excites me. I'd like to also be able to do that with the scripts I get or books or TV shows... I'm not going to limit myself.
I am sent too many mainstream scripts in which the older woman is really quite grotesque. Sometimes you read a script and you feel quite sick that they have to caricature older women in such a negative way.
Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.
From Ennio [Morricone] I ask for themes that clothe my characters easily. He's never read a script of mine to compose the music, because many times he's composed the music before the script is ever written.
Nobody is out to sabotage an entire script and do an improvisational experiment of a movie, but when they're feeling something in the moment, let them make it their own. That's what makes them great actors.
Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.
I had never really done something that was more of a horror film, and its funny, because those are the kind of movies that I like probably more than any other genre. The script had images in it that I liked.
Every actor has to deal with what's on his plate, and I try to deal with doing the best work possible with the most challenging scripts. I don't base it on whether it's a feature film or a TV-movie or cable.
I've gotten scripts over the years, but I believe it was the stories of 'Moonlight' and 'Hidden Figures' that really touched my heart and aligned with the messages that I felt were extremely important to me.
Right now I'm doing four shows at a time, trying to read four outlines every week, four scripts every week, and watching four rough cuts; it's a lot of good work. It's fun to do it, but it does wear you out.
Unfortunately, we don't have a depth of African scriptwriters, so it's easier to Africanize something that already works. Local script writers are giving me James Bond budget scenes that I can't even produce.
I try to keep myself busy creatively; it's for my own sanity after auditioning in the city for bad television shows and bad scripts and not being a name and having the clout to get my tapes passed on further.
I did a lot of violent junk just because I needed the money - alimony movies, you might call them - and then I decided to start turning down the junk scripts and wait for something better, no matter how long.
I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.
It's always the script first choosing roles. [Then] whoever else is attached. I never like to be the first person attached, because I don't really trust what's going on, unless there's a really good director.
On Phantom... I listened to the music while I was reading the script. And it had just blown me away. I really... I was so excited about it. It's been a long time since I really got so excited about something.
There is a story that you have to tell within a certain amount of time, and you can only show so much of the character. So as much as the script is born from the source material, there are certain limitations.
Sometimes you read a script and it's like, "You'll improv and this is just a blueprint of what the scene could be," and that's never a good sign. And it's never encouraging as an actor to take that on, really.
In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.
In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be.
I don't care for horror and fantasy films. I never go to see them in the theater. I know I've played in many of them, but I didn't do them because of their genre - I did them just because I loved their scripts.
I'd love to do a sci-fi movie, a western, or an espionage thriller. But I'm not going to limit myself. If a good script comes along, I'm not going to discount it because it doesn't fit into one of these genres.
Unfortunately scripts don't chase me. I chase them. I struggle, battle, discard, pick it back, struggle further, plead with it, curse it, cajole and try to be clever. But it is invariably the script that rules.
I would write scripts and little plays and perform them in the living room for my family when I was little with my brother until my mom said, 'Alright, you need to go do it somewhere else other than the house.'
After playing Saffy in 'Ab Fab', I needed to take time out from acting to see if I really wanted to do it. I had been doing it for a very long time and I was being sent the same sort of scripts again and again.
[Noah Hawley] just a fantastic writer. It's always about the script, it's always about the book; it always is. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. That's what attracted me to him first and foremost.
Acting, films, scripts, is literally the only thing I’m 100 percent confident in. I know what I’m doing. I just understand it, and I love it. When I’m on set, that’s when I feel the most at home and in control.
I'm reading scripts just like everybody else. Tin cup in hand, knocking on doors, trying to get a job. It's tough. They don't make as many films these days, and there's a lot of guys that are fighting for jobs.
It certainly isn't like I'm reading scripts thinking I need to do something really different. But you want to stretch yourself and challenge yourself; that's really the major turnon when you're going into work.
There's editing, and scripts to read and edit, and casting, and all the elements of production that just sort of take up the normal downtime that you would have as an actor. So there's not a lot of that for me.
What I learned is that I should probably read a screenplay every once in a while before I said 'yes'. You could make bad film out of a good script, but you're never going to make a good film out of a bad script.
The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process.
Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.
I am the public, a boy from Chandigarh who's bought tickets in black and revered films since childhood, and when I choose scripts, I take out the garb of an actor-slash-star, and I consume the script as a layman.
I've been getting a lot of science fiction scripts which contained variations on my 'Star Trek' character and I've been turning them down. I strongly feel that the next role I do, I should not be wearing spandex.
At Christmas, individuals are apportioned their roles in the family script - you're either the funny one or the sensitive one; or you either do the cooking or the washing up. And those roles aren't easy to change.
I had one well known director who kept saying, "Now Clint, this is what ...." And I'd say, "I know. I read the script. I'm the one who cast you as the director. Let me show you and you'll correct me if I'm wrong."
I read a ton of scripts. I read a lot of scripts, and you read one, and first of all, you felt like you read it in 14 minutes, because you're turning the pages so fast you can't wait to see what's going to happen.
Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.
A lot of my time is spent watching films and reading scripts. And it can be all-consuming. And it's obviously something I'm fortunate that is both my work and my hobby. It's what I would naturally be doing anyway.
My parameter of judging a script has not changed over the years. I still go for a script where the story interests me. Yes, there are times where I might go wrong; say, out of five scripts, I might go wrong on one.
You were taught how to do the things you needed to do. Dance, speech, fencing. They groomed people. If you were in a film, and the script wasn't working for you, they brought in screenwriters and fixed the scripts.
Writers are first directors. When directing our own scripts, we would have a better vision and clarity than directing the stories penned by others. I personally think that a writer's job is tough than a director's.
It's a weird thing when you spend your life trying to find these great scripts and great parts. You are reading scripts, you are traveling the world, you are hassling your agent. You are trying to find that script.
I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry.
I have been sent three or four scripts for television series, but there wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I want to tell a good story, whether it's a TV show, a movie, whatever. That's really my No. 1 criteria.
I don't look for roles, for they come to me. Mind you, it's not like I'm sitting in the middle of the floor with thousands of scripts around me. When work comes up, it's good. I love it. Work doesn't feel like work.
I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write one of those 1940s film scripts where every line is written with a sharpness and economy that is frankly artificial.
I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really.
It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me.