There are scripts when you fall so much in love with your character. And if you are lucky and offered this part, you should not tempt your fate and go to the greatest extent to be/to play this character. If you have an opportunity to do that and you ...
I like challenging parts, something I haven't done yet, something that scares me. There's just a feeling I get when I read a script that I love, I feel an attachment to it, a yearning to play that character.
I didn't want to play a rancher. I didn't want to have a cowboy hat on; I wanted to get away from that in the things I do. But I read the script and fell in love with it. As hard as I tried to say no, I couldn't.
When we started in the early '60s, football had a little bit of a tradition. But, they didn't have a mythology. And NFL Films, through our music and our scripts and our photography, created a mythology for the sport.
I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.
I've written a couple of scripts. Actually, a pilot. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, but it's a comedy about three young men in New York City, one of whom may or may not be a romantic like me.
I get a lot of action scripts. I get low-budget vehicles that will end up right on the video shelf. I want to do movies that I want to talk about, that I'm proud of, but I also want to make a living.
I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.
Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors.
You won't find me in a romantic comedy. Those movies don't speak to me. People don't come to talk to me about those scripts, because they probably think I'm this dark, twisted, miserable person.
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.
I really would have been stupid not to have done it. It was also a film that was actually happening, I mean, Miramax was doing it, and it had a kind of legitimacy to it. And once I read the script, I was there.
I'm most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page... sunrise over the desert and masses of... a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward.
When I'm shooting, I don't care who the star is. I have an actor playing a part, and I'm serving the script, not serving anyone's career.
I think you have to be in an insane stratosphere in terms of fame in order to get offered really well-written scripts. Amanda Peet is definitely not in that group.
I really like acting but, just now, the more I read a script I find myself thinking I'd like to direct rather than act.
I apply the three gag rule, which is if I can read a script without gagging more than three times, then maybe I can say yes to this job.
I'm going to go away on vacation, I'm going to try to get away from the phone, away from scripts. I think it's important to sit back and think about what you want.
I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.
I remember the first reading of the script we had and everybody was sitting around the table. I was very impressed with the level of acting that was in the room, particularly with Jennifer who has so much responsibility.
