Jon Spaihts Quotes & Sayings

Once you've written a good script, it will get made or not get made, according to variables you cannot control, like stars getting interested, and the superstitions in Hollywood rising or falling around what is over and done with versus what's in. — Jon Spaihts

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was knee-high. Once I knew that books were written by people and didn't just happen, it was obviously that I would write them, too. — Jon Spaihts

Most of my life, I thought that I would end up a novelist. But then, in New York City, after college, I started a company with a college friend where we made documentary video for museums. In that capacity, I shot, directed, edited and began to learn the vocabulary of film. — Jon Spaihts

I would say that working with Ridley Scott makes the process of directing much more terrifying. — Jon Spaihts

I grew up a really nerdy kid. I read science fiction and fantasy voraciously, for the first 16 years of my life. I read a lot of classic Cold War science fiction, which is much of the best science fiction, so I speak the language well, which is a commodity that's not easy to come by in Hollywood. — Jon Spaihts

A lot of screenwriters have a drawer of unsold scripts that they cut their teeth on. I don't have one. Everything I've written, after my first spec, I wrote on assignment. Everything I've written was work. — Jon Spaihts

When a new writer comes onto a project, he'll make wholesale changes just to mark the territory or for greater credit. — Jon Spaihts

It is true that, with TV, a writer gets a great deal more respect. — Jon Spaihts

Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers. — Jon Spaihts

The science fiction I write comes from a pretty deep pool of literature, not just from the reflection of other science fiction films, and I think that gives me somewhat deeper roots. — Jon Spaihts

I think my first love is film. There's something about the span of it and the completion of the experience. You sit down for two hours, in the dark, and you go somewhere else, and then you come back, having completed a journey. — Jon Spaihts

You don't control whether your movies get made. You can't. All you can control is whether your draft is great. So, you write your great draft, as best as you can, and then move on to the next thing. — Jon Spaihts

For a successful writer, the secret is to have many irons in the fire. Write the next thing. — Jon Spaihts