There’s a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow significant. But really, it’s not thei...
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin...
I don't think I've ever seen him in a movie theater! I've only seen him on TV. Wow, that's so silly of me! We only saw one of his films together, it was with a group of people, and when he kissed Deborah Kerr, I jumped off the couch and I ran up and ...
Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck...
[223 leaves the store] He Zhiwu, Cop 223: Somehow everything comes with an expiry date. Swordfish expires. Meat sauce expires. Even cling-film expires. Is there anything in the world which doesn't? [223 gives a can of pineapple to a passing street pe...
[about halfway through the film; Nicky has just calmed Ginger down after Lester was beat up by her husband's thugs] Nicky Santoro: [about her drinking] And take it easy with this shit, will you? I mean, this can only make matters worse. You're a beau...
Wikus Van De Merwe: Oh! I haven't shown you a picture of my wife! Here she is, my angel. I tell people she actually looks like an angel, you see here? The white looks like a halo on her head. Can you see that? She's my angel, you're picking that up o...
Dr. Anne Eastman: Hey, Do you have a particular interest in our paitient's X-Rays? Dr. Richard Kimble: What do you mean? Dr. Anne Eastman: I saw you looking at that boy's chest film. Dr. Richard Kimble: It's a hobby of mine. Dr. Anne Eastman: It's a ...
Frederick: You missed a very dull TV show on Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips, and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason they can never answer the question "How could it possibl...
I write back to every fan who writes me, which is kind of a full-time job in some regards 'cause I don't want people to wait too long . So I get up very early in the morning and try to rip through all of them. I pretty much sleep four hours a night. ...
[to Charlie] Robert McKee: I'll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. Find an ending, but don't cheat, and don't you dare bri...
Peppy Miller: [trying to pressure the studio into letting her do a film with George] I won't work anymore. It's either him or me. [Zimmer appears bemused] Peppy Miller: What I mean is, it's him AND me! Or it's neither of us! [everybody is still looki...
As a performer, you can't just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. You have to write and develop projects for yourself, because casting people aren't always going to see you the way you want to be seen. Write a one-person show, shoot a short fi...
A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal ...
Man, do you ever feel it's just the hope of things we live for?' I asked. 'I mean, it's like the things themselves are just a big disappointment, you know? We like the searching, the dreaming. It's sort oflike the way previews for a movie are better ...
Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ...
As for the new world war that's waiting in the womb of time, a healthily developed foetus, who can say what will spark it, how destructive it will be? We've already played at this war in film and fiction, indicating that there's a part of us that des...
When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models.
Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became come...
I watched as Humphrey Bogart’s character used beans as a metaphor for the relative unimportance in the wider world of his relationship with Ingrid Bergman’s character, and chose logic and decency ahead of his selfish emotional desires. The quanda...
[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous...
