Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.
I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter.
I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.
I became a script writer with absolutely no idea of how to write a script whatsoever. I still feel a bit of an outsider in that regard. If I can maintain that approach to screenwriting, it can continue to be enjoyable.
The history of screenwriting - of what we do - is more than 100 years old. It's thousands of years old, going back to Sophocles and Euripedes. I believe the only - the only - separation for being a dramatist is reading drama.
Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually s...
In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that becaus...
When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.
You don't want to be rude but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there. (Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)
True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.
Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.
Angry contradiction of the patriarch is not creativity; it's delinquency calling for attention. Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative.
When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.
No matter our talent, we all know in the midnight of our souls that 90 percent of what we do is less than our best.
Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.
The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriter...
Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.
Ever since I was young, 14 or 15, I wondered if you could write a book that combined the visceral thrill of watching a movie with the total immersion you feel when you're inside a good book. And I had some success as a screenwriter before I began wri...
There's this movie, 'Zero Dark Thirty' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some have complained that too many 'secrets' were dished out by the intelligence and special operations communities to director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and the...
I've never been conscious of having any real career plan, and I do not have a wish-list of actors, directors, screenwriters, or cameramen I'm hoping to work with. Life, I feel, has a way of leading us to the right situations and people, or at least t...
I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes writ...
