Script Production Quotes

I'd love to work on a script in collaboration.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays, and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater, where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts, but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

Eventually, the state's funding covered only the stages leading to presenting a film project to potential funding bodies. It was enough to produce a script, indicate casting and put together a budget to present it all, but nothing beyond that.

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

Not every script that rolls in is ready to shoot. Few are, actually. So you go back and work on the thing.

I figured I’d probably write 50 scripts in my life. Out of those 50, I figured maybe five would be produced, and that maybe one or two would be successful. So I always kind of expected I’d write at least one successful film in my life. [...] The way it all came together was kind of like Murphy's law in reverse—I don’t expect that kind of experience again any time soon.

My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast.

There's no need there to sit with the filmmaker for 11 years to develop the script, or go round the world raising money.

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.

It's always once the script's done in the first two years if it doesn't get going somehow or another, I've never had an old script that someone's made later on.

There aren't enough good scripts.

It takes a year for us to generate a script that is ready to shoot. There are maybe 20 drafts of a script. And, each time, someone saying 'I don't really love this,' we discuss it for 15 minutes.

It's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

For most directors, the scriptwriter is about as welcome on set as a member of the Taliban.

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

Most shows are normally 40 or 50 pages.