My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.
I go into a young film director's office these days and he says, 'Hey man, I know who you are. I grew up watching 'McHale's Navy'. And I think, 'Oh boy, here we go again'.
The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.
I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis.
Because I once became so distraught watching the film 'Watership Down,' my parents were happier to let me watch action adventures featuring humans and warriors rather than cute animals.
There are different types of bullying; one of the biggest ones out there right now is cyberbullying. I had the privilege of filming an 'Austin & Ally' episode centered on cyberbullying, how it can get out of control, the ups and downs that you feel, ...
If I'm really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again.
For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the...
I don't go to the cinema often anymore - I'd rather just pop in a disk and get the biggest monitor you've got, and if the quality is superb, I can watch a film, and if I don't like it I can pop it out.
Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't...
The reason I am unemployed for six months out of every year is because I have to turn down most of the films I'm offered. If I didn't, I'd only ever play a dark, satanic count on a horse.
We filmed one scene on the beach and there was definitely weird energy around, and we were followed around by a white owl to several different locations, and little things like that, or certain mishaps would happen and you'd have to wonder what that ...
Elaine and I got married in summer 1979, we went on our honeymoon and came back for the premiere of 'Scum.' All of sudden my face was on billboards in Leicester Square and people were crowding outside the cinema, going mad about the film. It was a co...
I don't like seeing myself on television and I don't enjoy filming. What I actually enjoy is thinking about how I am going to express something or how we are going to make the visual metaphor.
In orthodox film-making, you never shoot sequentially - but with improv, obviously every move you make has a knock-on effect; it is a cumulative process. I have improvised, on the non-scripted 'Timecode.' It can become entirely indulgent: actors smas...
I've actually done three pilots for Disney. I met with the network when I was 16 years old and had just started acting. I would fly to Los Angeles to film pilots, then fly back to Dallas, where I grew up.
I really do like the independent way of working. You don't get much studio intrusion compared to when you're working on a big Hollywood film where there tends to always be loads of people interfering. The only problem, though, with independent featur...
I stole a ton of film language from Steven Soderbergh and 'The Limey.' It's the definition of elliptical. It was the first movie I remember that introduced me to storytelling that isn't just one scene after another, and that things can be mixed up in...
I feel so comfortable in an acting role, you know, as an actor. Maybe it's because I came into it late. If anything, I've felt frustrated that I can't carry a film because everything since 'District 9' has been supporting roles.
The film opens up the world beyond Katniss' point of view, allowing the audience access to the happenings of places like the Hunger Games control room and President Snow's rose garden, thereby adding a new dimension to the story.
I write for somebody who has my own limitations. My reader has a certain difficulty with concentrating, which in my case comes from being a film viewer.
