Emma McLaughlin Quotes

I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

I think film, to me, as a director, is about telling a story.

There are no great scripts - just great films.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Eventually, I would love to direct, but not anytime soon. I just love the storytelling aspect.

Writing a whole series was a crash course in screenwriting, which is a very different muscle to standup comedy writing.

To make a great film you need three things - the script, the script and the script.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

Even with college, the reason I wanted to go so badly is because I wanted to major in film. I want to take screenwriting classes and learn more about behind the scenes stuff, because I love people like Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig who are able to write a lot of their own material and be so involved in everything they do.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

I look at the stories that Spike Lee tells... Great stories. Great director, great storyteller.

It's a director's job to tell a story and he's very well versed in telling stories with a bit of comedy in them and keeping the pace of the movie right and that's exactly what he did. He was observant of a world he didn't understand but he told a wonderful story.

I just use all the skills that I learned in film school, and I just incorporate them into my sketches. People don't realize that, with a story, there has to be a beginning, middle and end. There has to be a problem and a resolution. Just because it's six seconds doesn't mean it's not a story.

Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

Since I was a child, I've liked telling stories. Maybe because my father's a director, I grew up loving stories. I'm not good at spinning them at a dinner table because I do go on a bit, but I love writing them, and directing is just a way of editing the story.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

I've never directed before, so I need to make sure that people know that I can. The movie that I've written, 'The Sophisticates,' is a... small ensemble comedy and I hope it's charming and funny.

When you make a movie, you do it so piecemeal. You're doing it, not only scene by scene, out of order, but shot by shot, line by line. And there's this idea that the director has the whole thing in his or her head and they're going to somehow weave it all together in the end.

Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

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 haven't really tried to write a movie. It's tough to get into that mode.

I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries.

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.