Scripts Quotations | Page 2

We all sit in front of our mics and our scripts lay on music stands. Then the silliness begins!

I am going to have to stick to the script. If I muck around with the words it will defeat the object.

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie.

Normally when I'm sent a script I'll read it through to see how it hangs as a story and then I'll go back and read it through again and look at the character.

Ever since the movie premiered at Cannes, I've had a sudden surge of scripts and interest

I get work because I'm primarily a novelist but I've become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.

I'm an obsessive hiker and I do it every day for two hours and it really helps me when it comes to learning songs or scripts.

With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.

With scripts I've always looked at them and thought about kids, you know? Thought about the world and the impact... I won't do nudity and I never felt comfortable with that whole idea or things with huge sexual content - not my thing.

I'm doing a Dylan Thomas film, Map of Love, with Mick Jagger producing again. It's a wonderful script.

I choose movies, I never choose roles. I look at the script. I look at the director. I look at the other actors - and then the role.

I've been working on this feature script for Master Class, a play by Terrence McNally that won a lot of Tonys.

It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that!

There are no great scripts - just great films.

I've never committed to a role without a script.

I have always believed that chemistry can't be created between two people. You either have it or you don't. The script can only enhance it.

A lot of the websites built through the 1990s used Perl. The first webmaster of Sun Microsystems coined a wonderful phrase. He said Perl is the duck tape of the Internet - it's this language that people would write all these scripts that make things just work.

I never examined what I did in any great detail because I thought it would spoil things. I never read the scripts at all carefully, and never wanted to know what was going on, because I felt that being a benevolent alien that's the way it should be.

I was influenced by autobiographical writers like Henry Miller, and I had actually done some autobiographical prose. But I just thought that comics were like virgin territory. There was so much to be done. It excited me. I couldn't draw very well. I could write scripts and storyboard style using stick figures and balloons and captions.

I've rewritten a lot of the scripts I've done. 'Little Shop Of Horrors' was a complete rewrite, but I didn't touch the dialogue. Essentially, I'm a very good editor.

Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.

People recognize me, I have scripts, and auditions. And I meet great people

But most scripts are terrible. Most projects are bad, that's just kind of the way it is. And I'm not really attracted to those.

I would say 80% of the scripts I get are dramas and not comedies or romantic comedies, which is funny because that's what I do every week.

It doesn't help anybody to put out a bad script.

Ensure that your script is watertight. If it's not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.

The trouble is, being an actor, you're always being sent scripts, so you've always got something to read. You've always got about three scripts to read, that you have to read, all the time. So finding a book or getting into a book series is hard, especially for me.

I have a stack of scripts that I've read - I'm in the lucky position where I get offered things - but I haven't wanted to direct many of them.

Scripts are very different to books. They are blueprints for building, not the building.

I had written a script called Freed, which I had wanted to direct.

If I were actually Homer Simpson, I'd be getting scripts out the wazoo.

I did get offers from Hollywood, but they were all scripts with monsters in them. If I had done them, I would have disappeared. I would have come back to France anyway, and I would have had to start all over again and lost a lot of time.

I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.

The one good thing is that I get a lot more good scripts coming through my letterbox. 'Vera Drake' raised my profile in one way, and then 'Harry Potter' in another.

And when I'm on set, I'm just thinking about the script and of working. I think I've stayed focused on the work so much that I haven't really noticed my life start to change except for I've gotten busier.

I think every script I read has something that sends me into a state of panic but that usually makes me want to do it.

I've read some scripts, but I don't read as many books as I should.

As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.

I fix things now and then, more often tweak HTML and make scripts to do things.

I read as many scripts as I can and just find stuff that I think is interesting, find stories that I think are worth telling.

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.

The fun stuff comes when someone is not so strict on sticking to the script. You're allowed the spontaneity, and great moments can happen.

My dad reads the scripts and passes them on to me.

There are a lot of considerations that come into play when you craft one of these 'Saw' scripts, and there's only so much you can put into them.

A script is only as good as the director who's making it.

I've received some English-speaking scripts, but I was not interested in them.

I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.

I never turn down scripts without good reason. If I did, I would probably never work.

Television's so quick, and there's so many other fun elements to it, but you don't get such good scripts and the time to really make much more three dimensional characters.

I'm probably working on three different scripts at any time, so there's never a time where I've got nothing to do.

You can trust a Neil Simon script. Every dot. Every dash; that pause means something. He takes all the jokes out, practically.

I think I remember from the offset I said, 'I've visited this territory. This isn't for me.' And then I read the script and I said, 'You know, this is completely something different. This is a whole new life.'

I'm a sucker for a funny script. And then, as soon as I don't wanna be, one comes along and grabs me.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

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.

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.

I don't look at scripts in terms of commerciality. I just look at the part, the people involved.

I've never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you.

I have written a bunch of scripts that have not gotten produced, much more so early in my career than later.

Dave Chappelle asked me to come do his show. I read the script, and I said, 'Has he lost his mind?'

The first science fiction show on television was 'Tales Of Tomorrow' using scripts from the radio show 'X-1' which used stories from 'Galaxy Magazine' as its source material.

I think it's incumbent on actresses to bring something else to the part which isn't in the script.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I dont have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

I would consider a half hour sitcom if the script was good.

I practice reading all the time. I read everything and having so many scripts to read, which really helps out as well.

And they were writing scripts where Christine had hit the glass ceiling. And I always thought Christine would never hit the glass ceiling. I thought her dreams would take her. Maybe her dreams wouldn't take her where she wanted, but she still had her dreams.

As a kid, I was just writing scripts and taking whatever film classes I could in college.

With TV, the pace is so fast, the scripts are coming at you, the directors are firing things at you, it's breathtaking.

Being on TV sucks. It's a lot of work. You memorize scripts and then you show up and they change everything. I'm a control freak. When I'm doing stand-up, I say what I want and then I get instant feedback.

I'm not really that keen on mainstream; I'm not interested in doing the normal films. I do tend to go for the quirky, different scripts.

Once, I had so many scripts coming to me that I could hardly read them all.

In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That's not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It's a different point in both our lives.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

I watch the TV or learn scripts while on the elliptical - need to get back on it!

I learn the whole script before I show up

I've done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon

I hadn't done comedy before 'Fresh Meat' - I hadn't really been seen that way, and then 'Fresh Meat' came out, and suddenly a lot more comedy scripts were coming my way, which was really great.

Success is freedom - scripts coming your way and getting to choose the stories you want to tell.

My mum reads every script before I go for it.

I need to push myself. I'm not saying that I just want to do anything that's shocking, but when you have that combination of a script that's really beautiful and extremely shocking, it's exciting for me.

Often jobs are un-turndownable even before you read the script. You go, 'Well, I have to do that.

I really think that reading a whole script is kind of prying and neurotic, don't you?

It is rare that you read scripts that genuinely move you and make you feel that, regardless of the commercial possibilities, you have to make the film.

A good script and a good brief from the director is enough to let me know what is expected of me.

If the scripts are not good, I'll tell somebody, 'This isn't good.

I love travelling, and most scripts have been written while I have been travelling.

Well, I must tell you I write the scripts very close to the bone. So I'm writing episode seven now and couldn't tell you what happens in episode eight.

When I look back at it, I'm mostly amazed at how poorly it was shot. David Kelley is a great writer, and I thought the scripts were great, but it just looks so cheap.

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.

I don't even give my scripts to friends because I just feel it's, like, I don't need one more set of opinions.

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.

Marketing is such a key issue; in fact, the marketing department is often involved in the approval of scripts now.

I really like questions. I like people who write scripts because they're asking questions, not because they're giving answers. It's something that I look for.

When I'm working on a movie, I'm in my trailer playing guitar. And then on the road, I read scripts and think of... it just keeps both fires burning. I kind of need both.

If the script grabs me and appeals to me, I'm really very keen to work on it.

I have a very good memory for scripts. I can watch a show I like once, then remember about 90% of the script. But ask me who was in it, and I wouldn't have a clue.

And I find it very easy to memorize the scripts, which are so close to conversations my husband and I have.

I remember reading 'Disturbia,' one of the first scripts I ever got, and I go 'Pfft, who wants to make a movie about a guy in a house?'