Tales from the Script

John D. Brancato:
'Always sit on the couch,' that's my advice to wannabe writers when they get in there. Don't take the big chair. Let the producer or the director take that.

Melville Shavelson:
I am a writer by choice, a producer through necessity, and a director in self-defense.

Paul Schrader:
[Discussing his work on "Taxi Driver" with director Martin Scorcese] The reason Marty and I clicked was that, in essence, we were sort of the same guy. We were sort of the short, asthmatic film buff with a lot of guilt and anger... only he was Italian and urban and Catholic, and I was Dutch, rural and Calvinist.

Steven E. de Souza:
[while saying the following, de Souza lifts one foot to show he's wearing a flat-soled shoe] The most important thing in a screenwriter's arsenal is this: Wear flats. You never want to be taller than whoever the producer is... and you are already. I'm just telling you right now; I don't have to do the statistics; I don't need a double-blind study. All the screenwriters are taller, in general, than all the producers.

Richard Rush:
When I was a young man... in the business, I believed that my opinion was absolutely right and that I had the right answer to all questions. With age and experience I learned that I was right on all those occasions, but that there are several right answers to all occasions.

Mark O'Keefe:
A movie set is like the military, and as a writer you really have no place in the chain of command. So when you show up, you know, you're sort of like this weird creature...

Steve Koren:
[Breaking in as O'Keefe is in mid-sentence] There's really nothing for you to do. Your job's done, unless of course, in comedy somebody says, "Punch up," on the set. But generally it's like the director wants to do it, the scene, the way he's planned it out. And the actors've memorized the lines. And, you know, you're just kinda there, eating the egg salad.

Dennis Palumbo:
A writer friend of mine once described screenwriters as, "egomaniacs with low self-esteem."

Joe Forte:
There's so much to master [when writing a script] ; from character, to dialog, to plot, to theme, to concept. It's this machine with a lot of levers and buttons and when you're starting out it takes a long time to master all those things and play them like a pipe organ, well; all at the same time.

Adam Rifkin:
If you're a purist, and you don't want your words touched; you should either be a playwright or an author.

Mark Fergus:
How many times have we heard that story? I sent it out a million times, everybody rejected it, great people rejected it, smart people rejected it; and then one guy stumbles on it and says, "This is what I've been looking for."

William Goldman:
If you wanna write movies, you can't stop when you get pissed on and rejected.

Michael Wolk:
Something that will always sell in Hollywood, is high concept. It's usually; you take THIS and you match it with THAT, and then you got a movie. Like mafia [and] vampires - Hey! It's A Movie!

Joe Forte:
There's a phrase that you hear in Hollywood; 'It's a movie'. I didn't really understand that phrase when I first came into the business. It's code for: this script is everything we need it to be. It can attract an actor, it can attract a director, it can be marketed, it can attract an audience; it's a movie - it's complete.

Guinevere Turner:
[on pitching a script] A script is already a description of a thing, so to be describing the description of the thing - is just existential madness.

Larry Cohen:
Nobody gives you credit for the previous time at bat... no, you have to get a hit every time you're up.

Andrew W. Marlowe:
I think in the film business there is never one break-through moment, there is a series of moments.

Michael Wolk:
Your job being on the receiving end of a 'good idea' in a development meeting, is to handle this turd as if it was a piece of gold.