The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.
I was a screenwriting major at Georgetown, and I was in class with some really strong writers like Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote 'The Dark Knight' with Chris, his brother. He wrote 'The Prestige,' the story for 'Memento.'
A good story or a book is all about it's power to hold it's readers still till the very last word of it's climax - complexity in language, dialogues, descriptions, everything else is secondary!
I am just another fireman because the story focuses on Joaquin Phoenix's character, but I play Joaquin's close friend and I get burned up a little bit, but I don't die.
Throughout my career, when I was finished with the drawing for one film I would go up to the story department and help develop sequences. Sometimes these were for scenes that I would animate later on.
A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.
I always think it's interesting to switch genres, because if I read a script and I know exactly how to manifest a story, I don't really want to do it anymore, because I've already done it in my head.
Fleetwood Mac has been pretty truthful. Open about what we do. We've always done it from the inside out. Versus being pressured from the outside and changing the inside. And that's our story.
The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they're creating original stories that not only don't repeat what we've already done, they also don't repeat anything I've seen on television.
Survivor has been such a hit, and out of that have come so many interesting stories from people that we don't see on the big screen. We have helped make them incredible celebrities.
Once we truly grasp the message of the 'New Testament', it is impossible to read the 'Old Testament' again without seeing Christ on every page, in every story, foreshadowed or anticipated in every event and narrative.
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know.
I wondered what would be the most humiliating way possible to be turned into a vampire - a story that a vampire would be embarrassed to share with their vampire buddies over a nice glass of Type O.
'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through.
…little people like me have to keep the true story alive. That way, when the revolution ends, and people come looking for the history, we can say, ‘Here it is – we kept it for you.
I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?
I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.
If you take the more general role of going to local stations around the country in Montana or South Carolina or wherever, and start in the local news, it's a lot more difficult to get to the stories that you want to really cover.
In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero's not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He's one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it.
I'll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it's disappointing.
It doesn't matter if I go on CBS, PBS or Fox. Whoever is interviewing me is going to want to create some conflict in the story, or it's not interesting. That's just the way the news is.
