Script Quotations | Page 2

I sketched out a rough story for them and the director said, well it's a good story but we have the go-ahead from Universal to make this script and did I want to do it. I said no, and they left.

They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.

Michael died five years ago this January, and the first thing that really struck me about the script was the part about her peeling off from the funeral and just getting into a rowboat and having a real kind of cry where nobody was.

I think it's always challenging to look at a script and make it your own while maintaining the sense of what the style of the show is.

These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.

I like challenging parts, something I haven't done yet, something that scares me. There's just a feeling I get when I read a script that I love, I feel an attachment to it, a yearning to play that character.

Film, for me, is in two stages. One is when I write the script more or less on my own - that's the nice bit. And then comes for me the unpleasant bit when they all go off, 100 people - actors and camera people and film and sound - and I stay away. When they go into the editing room, I come in again, and that's the bit I like.

If the script is right, I'm not above doing a movie with broad appeal.

And that's what I really love, is finding a script and fantasizing and going to a different world and kind of portraying a character that is interesting. Because other lives interest us, that's why we read magazines like 'People' and try and fascinate and drool over what other people are doing.

As an actor, there are many confusing factors that can make you take or not take a decision. It becomes difficult. Your first and last checkpoint should be the story. I always read a script as an audience.

More of 'The Bourne Identity's script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum's novel.

I don't like most Christmas movies. They're pretty bad, though they seem to make tons of money anyway. Like this movie 'Elf,' I got the script for that, and I turned it down right away. Against my wife's better judgment.

The main problem was a pacing problem. I had wanted the project to be about 20-30 issues, and I should have written it out as a full script beforehand.

I generally edit quite heavily. In general, there aren't many scenes that are sitting where they sat in the script in the final form.

'The Fighter' was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.

Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.

I read the script for Wonder Boys, and I said that was almost perfect, it was so classy, cool and funny. It's a really specific thing. We stuck to it, it turned out good and a lot of people liked it.

I love to see how a character unfolds off the page in a project. I don't always know how the character is going to turn out, even with the script being there. It's not always clear where that character is going to take me. Or where I will take them.

A good script and perfect casting, that's 90 percent of the work.

With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it's going to translate easily.

I certainly learned how to break down a text at Princeton, which helps me break down a script - or at least that's the line I feed my parents when they start wondering where all that good money went.

Frankly speaking, it's only the script that matters to me the most. If I like the script, then I just commit to myself and go ahead with it. But I also look at the commitment and confidence of the director of the film because it's him who will shape the film.

There have been a few times when I've read a script and it's really cool but the girl character's just kind of pathetic. It's not going to do me any favours just being 'the girl' in a cool movie.

I remember the first reading of the script we had and everybody was sitting around the table. I was very impressed with the level of acting that was in the room, particularly with Jennifer who has so much responsibility.

So it was just funny to read a script that was just similar to what had been going on in my life.

If I'm on a roll, and I finish a script at 3:00, I'll start another at 3:02.

When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.

Finally, when the money was high enough, the script suddenly revealed itself as being very clear to me.

It's never been difficult for me to say no. I have never given excuses like I don't have dates. I have never over-quoted to avoid a project. I simply say that while the script might be good, I can't connect with it. My strategy is that while I wouldn't want anyone to waste my time, I shouldn't be doing that, either, with others.

When a script moves me, I find that I immediately understand a character. Of course not completely, but I do understand.

The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across.

It is important to be financially savvy when you turn producer. As a director, you just need to have a good script in hand.

I got the script for 'Real Steel.' I started reading and saw that it was about robot boxing, and I was immediately turned off. It's not my thing. But I continued on, and by the time I got to the end of the script, I had chicken skin and tears in my eyes. I thought, 'Man, we don't make movies like this anymore.'

When you have a good script you're almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.

I'm used to changing a lot of the dialogue. But if I feel like the script is working, I don't want to mess with it.

Almost every script that I've gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven't chosen them. All the ones I have chosen are because I've been fascinated with the source material or because of the script.

Madonna is that forbidden thing, the Nietzschean creative woman. Her preoccupation with a high level of work doesn't allow her to follow the usual script that powerful women are expected to follow - 'don't hate me for my success, don't hate me for my power.'

A good project but a poor director will always make a mediocre film, but an average script and good director can make a good film, as he will put in everything to make the film look good.

I hadn't read comics really before coming in to shooting the original 'Thor.' During that and beforehand, I read stacks and got my head around it all. We reference, especially when we were putting the script together before we started shooting, other stories.

Things have got to add up to 100 points. The script is part of it, the character is part of it, the people I'm working with is the third part of it - and any combination of the three has got to add up to 100 points.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

I've been spoiled by this project. I was given the script and went in to read, realizing that this was a powerful story and one that wasn't told very often.

My feeling about the movies is that most of them are terrible. If you don't have a decent script and a decent director, forget it.

You know when you've found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.

I don't care about names attached to the script. That doesn't matter to me. All things being equal, I would like to work with a good script with a good director, and the part I play is of less important than those two factors.

My experience is that's rare - that you have a script that is... what they call 'film-ready.'

You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.

People say, 'Well, whose career do you follow? Where do you see your career going? What movie do you want to do next?' And I can't tell you what type of movie I would go and do next. I would have to read the script and feel for a character. And if I feel in my gut for a character, I know that that's somebody I have to play.

I'm quite curious and excited about seeing a new script for 'Blade Runner.' If, in fact, the opportunity would exist to do another, if it's a good script, I would be very anxious to work with Ridley Scott again; he's a very talented and passionate filmmaker. And I think it would be very interesting to revisit the character.

One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.

I think that when you first read material or you first read a script or story and know you might be playing a part, it's important not to see yourself because it should be a challenge enough that it doesn't come easy.

If it was a great script and a great character, I would love to do a romantic comedy.

In general, when moviemakers talk to scientists, they usually see them as a resource to solve particular technical problems or script problems for them. So, something like: what sort of weaponry would aliens be able to wield?

'Unforgiven' is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, 'This is great, but I'd like to do this when I'm older.' So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

I have moments when I'll stare at a script and say, 'I don't know what I'm doing!' But then I push myself into that feeling because I think panic is important.

Possibly because I did start off as a journalist, my starting point has always been that you've got to keep an audience with you. Whatever you're doing, you always want a script to be a page-turner. It's very important never, ever, to feel above that.

My agent told me they were casting for the voice of Gollum. I hadn't read The Lord of the Rings, but I read the script and realized what an amazing role it was. I developed a voice for the audition tape, then met Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh at the auditions and fell in love with them both.

My script was copyrighted in 1999 while I was in college, and theirs was copyrighted in 2001, the same year that I was getting investors and letters of intent. A very famous celebrity gave Ice Cube my script and the story board. I am not saying two people can't have the same idea, but for our concepts to be similar is impossible.

On my side of things, I was sent a script and asked if I wanted to do it. So, whatever decision making went into it prior to that, I'm not privy to.

I wish he'd stick to the script more. But when you have that type of athlete, nine out of 10 times when he does things like that he's going to help you.

I was the first person in America to have the script and I think only the third person to know what the story was,

I was sent the script for 'Silver Linings' when I was doing a play in D.C. at The Kennedy Center with Cate Blanchett and I was sent the script and asked if I was interested, and I said 'Oh, boy am I!'

Nobody just flops a complete 'Doc Martin' script on the desk. They all have to be taken apart and all the apologizing taken out. Because it's hard to have a protagonist that doesn't really like anyone and nobody really likes him; it's a hard premise to start from.

On '24,' it says on the front page of your script: 'This script is for the production staff and cast. Please don't show it to anybody else.'

Most actresses would have killed just to be an extra. I had to beg her to read the script first.

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could.

People would come to me and say, 'Jet, your Kung Fu is pretty good, do you want to be an action star when you grow up?' At 17, I was given the script and I went to make the movie.

My last game, streamers flying, world champions. How could you write a better script than this?

If the script is sharp and witty, the movie will offer an inside peek into an industry that fascinates and antagonizes most people.

I'd just go into a room in my memory and just look around and start seeing things that I'd forgotten, like the alphabet on the blackboard in Irish, which we had to chant every day for months and months and months. I remember the Gaelic script and things like that. And this awful, putrid lavatory that we used outside." ()

I'd just love to have an audience and it's the most fun in the world to get a new script every week and have the audience come in, and work with those actors.

Les Miserables. I never read the book before, but when I read this script it was so outstanding, so brilliant, I wanted to make it.

The plans this year are for me to finish the script that I'm working on and to finance and direct the live action Spawn movie myself.

'Liberace's a great film. It's a great piece of material. I have a great script and it's a great score.

My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.

Most people script, but people script for different reasons. I think the main thing you want to do, aside from scoring, is kind of see what the intentions of the defense are on that first drive, in that first set of plays. It's kind of like a boxer coming out and jabbing a little bit. You're trying to see what the other guy is going to do.

She maintains that sort of distance, and I think that's the kind of distance one needs to walk that line with that humor. So the script is informed on every level by it.

She just really liked the script and ... I responded to that.

When you read something in script form, there are some subtleties that stand out with far greater gravitas than sometimes what you see on screen.

Script comes first, then the actors, then you gotta be lucky enough to get the right time slot. Then people have to watch.

We might have a script planned for next week and then something important might happen, and we address that then.

When the script was written, it was sent to me with asterisks marking where he felt a song would be appropriate. Before the film was shot, the score was written. I made a demo of it, so they lived with the music as they were making the film.

I have may gotten away from the (offensive) script a little,

I have been an Avengers fan since the middle 1960s. I grew up with them, and I've imagined a hundred different versions of an Avengers movie. I think I even have a script I wrote back in eighth grade, 'Avengers vs. the Mole Man.' Truly dreadful, but a work of love.

kind of made my life difficult, because my script was around before they came around and they had a lot of bigger clout attached to it.

I'd always intended to make 'Far North' straight after 'The Warrior.' We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.

Ideally, really ideally, you want to get to a place where you can have creative control over the material you do - choices, at least, anyway. And you want your choice of script and role. But do you really want your life to revolve around trying to maintain your privacy?

I couldn't script a better way to spend my time. It's all about good dogs and good people.

If Oracle wants to spend more money on lawyers, they should go ahead, but investors should be planning for a world where Oracle and PeopleSoft are separate, ... Unfortunately, the script of this movie ends with Oracle being disappointed.

I can't give you the exact definition of what a fast start is. That's the thing, we get to define that, ... We get to write the script to what a fast start is. I can't tell you right now what that script says.

I got a script sent to me at this office and I got a call from a woman - Universal's doing a snowboarding movie. I'm not in it yet, but I'm supposed to meet with the director in New York soon. I'm waiting to hear back from them.

For us to come in after 17 years of never being in the postseason since Coach Huggins was here, you couldn't write a better script then to play Temple. For a fledgling group like us, to come in and be able to play them is just a great honor.

I don't suggest that anyone direct a show that they're in. But I really know what I wanted out of it, and I know the script really well.

I don't think you could have scripted it any better. I think the script right now, if somebody sent it to Hollywood they would turn it down because they would say it couldn't happen. It's been an incredible ride. The football gods have really shined the light on me.

I fancy myself at being pretty good at understanding a script and finding the weaknesses, and then making them more radical than they are. People tend to listen to me.

But this phenomenal thing happens - even though you are the same guy with the same script - when you have a producer attached.

I felt like Alan Turing's story was such an important story to tell, and it was so wonderful to write the script and other people find it and say, 'I never heard this story.' It's such an amazing story that people don't believe it.

I have been in five Harry Potter films and never read a 'Harry Potter' book. If you are an actor, all you have is the script you are given. If you read the book, you might get disappointed about what's been left out.

I have been involved with script approval, approvals of character designs and the art direction, on kind of a consultant basis.

I had a script but didn't need it. There's no chance for this to work unless his head and heart are in the right place, and they are. He's not a 23-year-old kid pushing the older guy out of the rotation, and he realizes that.