The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.
I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.
I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.
For 'So Cold the River,' I'm actually working on adapting the book with Scott Silver, who was just nominated for an Oscar for 'The Fighter,' and who also wrote '8 Mile,' which I think is a terrific screenplay. The chance to work with Scott is a treme...
David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet.
I think of myself as a guy who tries to write screenplays and now has tried to direct one. Anything more than that is meaningless and it gets in the way of being a real human being.
I do have some theatrical background. I've written plays and seen plays and read plays. But I also read novels. One thing I don't read is screenplays.
Whatever you want to do in the industry, do it on the smallest level at first. If you want to be a writer, write a screenplay in your house. If you want to be an actor, put on a one-man show. If you want to be a stand-up comedian, go to an open mic.
A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the ...
Writing a screenplay needs to be more than words on a page - and by the way, I think the words on the page are something you have to try to execute on the highest level you can; I'm not dismissing that by any regard.
Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.
I've started movies without screenplays both on 'Clash' and on 'Hulk,' and that is tremendously stressful because you have a tendency to overcompensate with effects. You haven't tested it in your head. You didn't run it over and over again and covere...
Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a sc...
In books, you can just wallow in dialogue, and you can just wallow in written words. In screenplays, every line has to serve the purpose of the line that's implied before it and the line that's implied after it. Maybe five lines have to do the work o...
Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sens...
A prince may be seen happy today and ruined tomorrow without having shown any chance in his character. For the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes...
I've always written a little bit. I mean, I've written screenplays, and I've doctored my dialogue for years, and I've written speeches - I was a speechwriter on 'The West Wing,' so I like that kind of thing. But I never really thought I'd write a boo...
My understanding of films was just as much as any young girl who watches Bollywood films. I had no idea about the whole process of filmmaking, about dialogue writing, scripts, screenplay etc. I had probably gone to two or three film shoots in my chil...
I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.
The few times I've tried to write original screenplays, it's a difficult process because I just don't feel like I know the characters the way I know them after the year or two it takes to write a novel.
Suddenly I was writing a lot of screenplays, and I was no long in New York, so I stopped acting in plays, and it just became too tricky to find a part to play, either in a play or a film that coincided with my schedule writing and or directing.
