:EUROSCREENWRITERS --- |
Get Going: Quotes on Directing Quotes on Screenwriting and Writing in General Quotes on Creativity and Inspiration |
Quotes on Screenwriting & Writing from Euroscreenwriters Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming
the audience is any less intelligent than you are. ...talents such as Kipling had... the discipline of Flaubert. ...the
conception of what it can be and an absolute conscience as unchanging
as the standard metre in Paris, to prevent faking... intelligent, disinterested
and, above all, he must survive. I wanted to see her laugh, to see how her face would respond to what
I said, to watch her eyes, to study her gestures. Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense,
a writer has no life of his own. Even when he's there, he's not really
there. And when he dreams he does not want to write, he does not have the power
to dream he wants to write; and when he dreams he wants to write, he does
not have the power to dream he does not want to write. I believe books will never disappear. It is impossible for it to happen.
Of all man's diverse tools, undoubtably the most astounding are his books...
If books were to disappear, history would disappear. So would man. Journalism is the first rough draft of history. A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime,
but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make
it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak
like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and
harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense. I began to write, and the past lost some of it's power - I wrote it out
of me. I suppose that every novelist has something in common with a spy: he
watches, he overhears, he seeks motives and analyses characters, and in
his attempt to serve literature he is unscrupulous. A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a
store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly
directed will bring a character alive. It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable. It begins with a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness,
a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with. Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for
bears to dance to, when all the tiem we are longing to move the stars
to pity. This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated, if you ask me. I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it. Do not appear so scholarly, I pray you. Humanize your talk, and speak
to be understood. Do you think a Greek name gives more weight to your
reasons? The writer who wants to learn how to use dialogue in the motion picture
should try to make his story understandable without the spoken word. "When an old man dies in Africa, a whole library is burned down." You sell a screenplay like you sell a car. If somebody drives it off
a cliff, that's it. Vi skal være venner og fortælle hinanden mange historier.
For hvad er livet? Fremtiden er her ikke endnu, og man kan ikke forudse,
hvad den vil bringe. Nutiden er kun et øjeblik, og fortiden er
en lang historie. De, der ikke fortæller eller lytter til historier,
lever kun for det ene øjeblik, og det er ikke nok. At følge med I en historie er en speciel aktivitet, I hvilken
vi hele tiden forsøger at forudse det fortsatte forløb og
udgangen på historien. Samtidig korrigerer vi vores opfattelse af,
hvad som skal ske, indtil den falder sammen med det virkelige forløb
af historien. Vi siger da, at vi har forstået. "Screenwriting," she once said, "is like writing in the
sand with the wind blowing." We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. I loved Feydeau's one rule of playwriting: Character A: My life is perfect
as long as I don't see Character B. Knock Knock. Enter Character B. Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming
the audience is any less intelligent than you are. Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. Writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their
motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle,
like a long bout of some painfull illness. One would never undertake such
a thing if one were not driven by some demon one can neither resist nor
understand. I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand. I shall live bad if I do not write and I shall write bad if I do not
live. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer,
no surprise for the reader. Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their
hell on earth, will escape all punishment thereafter One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem,
see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable
words. The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we
are unable to say. Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot
it. The first draft of everything is shit. How can you write if you can't cry? If you have someone on the set for the hair, why would you not have someone
for the words? When you start writing you're 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you've
written for a length of time, you've learned a great deal about your craft,
and you've become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It's like writing uphill. As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent
procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching
infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing,
until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you
have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it
with me would be grisly. Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper
until the drops of blood form on your forehead. Lindsay Doran (producer), James Schamus (co-producer), Ang Lee (director)
and I had met previously this month to discuss the latest draft of the
script, which is what we're all here to work through... Lindsay goes round
the table and introduces everyone -- making it clear that I am present
in the capacity of "writer" rather than actress, therefore no
one has to be nice to me. A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be
too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit. Everything
else-- just tear that motherfucker apart. Most playwrights go wrong on the fifth word. When you start a play and
you type 'Act one, scene one,' your writing is every bit as good as Arthur
Miller or Eugene O'Neill or anyone. It's that fifth word where amateurs
start to go wrong. There was a time when making 'Barney Miller' a hit on the air was my
life. I cared about nothing else. That was all I was concerned with. And
I told my wife and I told my children if it costs me my relationship with
my family, I'm committing five years of my life to making the best television
show I can possibly make. Whatever it costs, under any circumstance. And
I hocked my house, and I gave up my salary and I did everything to give
the show a chance to start going. And that's what you have to do. They have followed their usual procedure and handed my treatment over
to several other people to make a screenplay out of it. By the time they
are ready to shoot it may have been through 20 pairs of hands. What will
be left? One shudders to think. Meanwhile, they have paid me a lot of
money... They scowled at dialogue, shuddered at jokes, and wrestled with a script
until they had shaken out of it all the verbal glitter and bright plotting.
Thus they were able to bring to the screen evidence only of their own
'genius.' Todd interfered in every conceivable department of the production, not
excluding my own; indeed, so far as I know, he is now rewriting the picture
as he goes along, grinding the crank, building the sets, unnerving the
actors, and generally qualifying as an up-to-date Leonardo da Vinci. It's
inaccurate to describe his cyclonic conduct as energy or vitality-- it's
much more a violent frenzy I'm sure the head-shrinkers could classify. My chief memory of movieland is of asking in the producer's office why
I must change the script, eviscerate it, cripple and hamstring it? Why
must I strip the hero of his few semi-intelligent remarks and why must
I tack on a corny ending that makes the stomach shudder? Half of all the
movie writers argue in this fashion. The other half writhe in silence,
and the psychoanalysts couch or the liquor bottle claim them both. Listen carefully, shake your head thoughtfully, then leave them in the
dark... where you found them. Writers are lucky. Whatever the mood, no matter the longing, the writer
can use his words to connect himself to any world he wishes to visit. Don't you know the finest things in the world have been written on an
empty stomach?" To me, that's disaster. Who's the authority in that case? I've seen that,
and I think it's utterly unendurable, and usually the actor's wrong. Generally
speaking, actors are not writers. I try not to change the script because
I think you get into a funny area there. If you start opposing the writer,
you lose any sense of discipline, and half the time you're opposed because
you aren't actually prepared to face the problem. You can fool yourself
so easily that way. I mean, if you've taken the part because the writing
is good, then it's your business to find a way to play it, not change
it because it suits your whim. To me, there's nothing to take the place
of good dramatic writing. Nothing. A writer's inspiration is not just to create. He must eat three times
a day." A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for
other people. Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three
years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is
what he was intended for. Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to
champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment. A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. To write simply is as difficult as to be good. A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with
bad. A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought; there is a visible
labor and there is an invisible labor. The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it
has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked
about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply
written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work. Today is a dawdly day. They do seem to alternate. I do a whole of a day's
work and then the next day, flushed with triumph, I dawdle....The crazy
thing is that I get about the same number of words down either way. Writers write about what obsesses them. Anybody can become a writer, but the trick is to STAY a writer. I've only written a tenth of what I know-- and they're already screaming. It is the task of the scenarist to invent little pieces of business that
are so characteristic and give so deep an insight into his creatures,
that their personalities clearly and organically unfold before the eyes
of the audience so that the latter feel that the actions of these people
are contingent upon their characters, that there exists some kind of a
logical fate, and that nothing is left to mere accident or coincidence.... I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand. If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things
worth reading or do things worth writing. Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer is by nature a dreamer-- a conscious dreamer. A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling
he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at
it all. I shall live bad if I do not write and I shall write bad if I do not
live. First get your facts; then you may distort them at your leisure. The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who
have not got it. Writers have an island, a center of refuge, within themselves. It is
the mind's anchorage, the soul's Great Good Place. [His] style is detestable; but it is not the worst thing about him. ...I had decided that the only thing I was fit for was to be a writer,
and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit
for real work, and that writing didn't require any All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer,
no surprise for the reader. I loathe writing. On the other hand I'm a great believer in money. Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since
it is a dangerous and contagious disease. It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. A writer is always admired most, not by those who have read him, but
by those who have merely heard of him. Little presses write to me for manuscripts and when I write back that
I haven't any, they write to ask if they can print the letter saying I
haven't any. No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who had ever lived, but
most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly
believe their wish has been granted. Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable
to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes books. There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you
need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think
the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with
the long winter evenings. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't
help it. Writers are only rarely likable. A writer is a controlled schizophrenic. The whole world can be divided into those who write and those who do
not write. Writing is the hardest way of earning a living with the possible exception
of wrestling alligators. Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent
to those who have none. Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous
if you earn no money. Fifty years old and still only a writer! Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's
too dark to read. I think that the fact that I've been pretty successful and don't have
too many really terrible shows, and have a reasonable amount of good ones
around is that I've always thought that I was as good as the material
and no better. And I once wrote for Peter Sellers and I saw how that poor
man was preyed upon by film producers who'd say ''Ah, don't worry about
the script, Peter. You're so funny, you'd be funny without the script.''
The moment that you start believing that you can be funny in a situation
that isn't any good... My work is at a typewriter. It always will be. In the afternoons, Gertrude Stein and I used to go antique hunting in
the local shops, and I remember once asking her if she thought I should
become a writer. In the typically cryptic way we were all so enchanted
with, she said, ''No.'' I took that to mean yes and sailed for Italy the
next day. I type in one place, but I write all over the house. After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for
posterity. Nothing is less sacrosanct than a mediocre book. It's much more important to write than to be written about. Life is too noisy. Reading is a quiet time for the soul. How can you write if you can't cry? The writer's way is rough and lonely and who would choose it while there
are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say cleaning ferryboats? Getting even is one reason for writing. To me, writing is a horseback ride into heaven and hell and back. I am
grateful if I can crawl back alive. Every great man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes
the biography. Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting. Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if
you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not
write the paragraph at all. It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others
not to write at all. I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good
is not original, and the part that is original is not good. The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and the lightning bug. No wonder the really powerful men in our society, whether politicians
or scientists, hold writers and poets in contempt. They do it because
they get no evidence from modern literature that anybody is thinking about
any significant question. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the
chaff. There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. Fuck the writers. Americans like fat books and thin women. I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can
come together, and I hope they will, but if that is too adorable, I'd
rather have the money. If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers. The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he's given the freedom
to starve anywhere. The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who
want to write, don't. Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than
those I remember writing. If you have someone on the set for the hair, why would you not have someone
for the words? I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve
it through not dying. I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's
read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent
to people who have none. I like to think of the world I created as being a kind of keystone in
the universe; that, small as the keystone is, if it were ever taken away
the universe itself would collapse. ...write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not
too damned much after. You have all the scenes. Just go home and word it in. Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers.
My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. I don't know whether or not Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. But if he
didn't, he missed the chance of a lifetime. I'm a Hollywood writer, so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain. What's all this business of being a writer? It's just putting one word
after another. The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling
which would lift that book above the ''curiosity'' level. Burn it, son, burn it. Fire is a great refiner. It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A. These stories have trees in them. |
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