Lance Henriksen Quotes

It's funny: the reason I did 'Beautiful Creatures' was the same reason I did everything else - even though it was a genre film and existed at a more studio level, the script and the characters were so well written.

I think that it's fun to get the script and open it like a Christmas present. That's 'Alcatraz' or anything that I'm working on. If the groundwork has been laid too much, the surprises aren't there.

I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. 'Stargate Universe,' they were kind of secretive too a little bit about what they wanted to do, but I kind of liked working this way. I like the surprises, and I like knowing just enough to work on the character.

Many times, what's in the script doesn't make it to the film these days, and when you choose a job, you take it based on genre and whom you're going to work with, if you believe in them.

As an actor, whatever I get the opportunity to do, if it has a good story then I'm in. I thought 'Dead End' had a great story; 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' of course, was probably the first real horror film I was in.

Some of my favorite movies are just movies that are just good stories, and aren't necessarily big budget movies or anything.

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

If I feel like it's a well-written script and if it speaks to me, it's something I want to do. I usually rely on my instincts when it comes to a script.

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on 'The Simpsons' and 'Futurama' is 'How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?' Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.

It doesn't matter to me if it has a surprise ending or not. I usually go for the material or the project.

Limited points of view let the writer dispense - and the reader gather - information from various corners of the story. It all becomes a kind of dance, with the writer guiding the reader through the various twists and turns. The challenge is keeping readers in step, while still managing to surprise.

Jeff Eastin is good in that he'll tell me a plot twist that's coming up if he thinks it would be something Peter would know ahead of time, and if it's something that would be a surprise to Peter, I'll tell Jeff, 'Oh, don't tell me. I don't want to know.' And then it's exciting to read it and exciting to play it.

Film-makers must decide what story to tell and how to tell it.

I write fast. But it takes me a while to get going. It's very important for me to see my whole plot. I have to see the end first because I like a surprise in the end. Which is why I let characters and plot gestate in my mind.

For the last 30 years our cinemas have been ruled by science fiction and horror. We've had some very good Fantasy films in that time period, but for my tastes I still haven't seen fantasy done to absolute perfection. That is the hope I have in this project.

The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything. And if you don't connect to that foundation, if you don't believe in that and feel that you wanna spend three, four months of your life exploring it, then all of the other elements are secondary.

When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.

It so depends on each script, because you can say... I always thought I wouldn't have wanted to do something that was kind of like as big and commercial as 'The Dark is Rising,' but I really liked the script. I thought it was really clever.

I really enjoy working in television and the evolution of a character over time.

I opened the script to the 'The Wall,' and 15 minutes later I was done with it, and I loved the movie and wanted to be part of it.

People think that I have some idea about how I choose my films. I make sure that I am doing the kind of films that I want to watch. You hear so many stories, and one of them will stand out and connect to you somewhere.

What I love with 'Game of Thrones' is, every season, I get to continue to develop the existing themes; every season, I also get to write new themes.

My way of deciding whether a film is worth doing is if you can get through it all in the first read.

I definitely have to know every detail of a script and analyse its potential before I think further because if the director is the captain, then the script is the ship.