After 'Muriel's Wedding,' I first went to America, and I was sent all these scripts about fat girls overcoming hurdles. Something in me knew not to go down that road, even if it was a good script.
After I made my first short film that wasn't terrible, people were interested in potentially developing a feature with me. Every time I read a script, it was a bizarre, too-dark, genre-less thing that no one wanted to make.
I've been fired from a situational comedy with a script they wrote specifically for me because of my voice.
You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin.
At first, when I received the script for the 'Archie' show, I was immediately turned off.
I've got a big closet of scripts, and a big stack of scripts on the side of my desk, because you get a whole bunch. Nothing's going to be perfect, and I realize that; but I am a perfectionist, so you go through a lot of stuff.
I wrote a script - a script about a guy working on the automobile assembly line; I never could get money for that. I did a pilot about minimum wage workers for HBO that didn't get picked up; they thought it was depressing, even though it was a comedy.
I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.
As a jobbing actor, I never get a script and go 'I can't be bothered with this.' Life doesn't work like that. For a movie star, maybe, but for a jobbing actor, that doesn't happen.
I would get scripts about 'a young swinging bachelor on the make,' and I said, 'No, I've done that.'
I'm first and foremost a company man, surprising as that is. I love Warner Brothers. That's where I have a deal. That's where I've been for years. So I don't really interact too much with other studios and do things with other studios and I don't necessarily read scripts from other studios.
My m.o. as far as choosing projects is I really try not to work. I try to not do the scripts that are offered me.
A lot of scripts that I was given I didn't feel were right for me, because I didn't feel anything for them - I didn't feel like I was going to change in life and start directing.
I would never do a sexist script.
I really don't know what happened in reference to 'The Butler.' Mr. Daniels and I had a conversation. I had the script, the email that goes along with it in reference to the character, read the script, loved it. Then I never heard from Mr. Daniels again, and the next I saw was that Oprah Winfrey is now playing the part.
There was a certain moment. I was about 61 - two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying - "I don't wanna do it. The part's too small." And he sent it back to me, he said, "You shouldn't read the lover. You should read the father.
The film you know as 'Super Troopers' is a film that almost didn't happen. The script was originally commissioned and developed by Miramax, but when it failed to get a green light, Harvey Weinstein was kind enough to give it back to us so we could make it elsewhere.
I wrote a script, and I gave it to a guy who reads scripts, and he read it, and he liked it, but he said he thinks I ought to re-write it. I said, "Fuck that - I'll just make a copy!"
Dave Chappelle asked me to come do his show. I read the script, and I said, 'Has he lost his mind?'
I think I wrote the first draft of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' in '79. No one wanted to buy it. Nobody. I felt very strongly about it, so I stayed with it and kept paying my assistant and everything. At a certain point, I was literally flat broke.
The Lord Chamberlin was censoring scripts when I first came into the theater.
I've sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they've never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive.
The action star's life is very short. Back in Asia, I can do whatever I want to do. I'm the producer, I'm the director, I can do so many things, but in Hollywood any time I present a script they say: "No, no, no, Rush Hour 3, Rush Hour 4."
I do get a fair amount of scripts; I got 'Frozen River' kinda just that way. I have a hard time turning my back on anybody who says they have something for me.
I did a lot of violent junk just because I needed the money - alimony movies, you might call them - and then I decided to start turning down the junk scripts and wait for something better, no matter how long.
