Movie Script Quotes & Sayings

In a way, the whole notion of a blueprint of a building is not that different from a script for a movie. A sequence of spaces, which is what you do as an architect, is really the same as a sequence of scenes. — Susanne Bier

There are people I'm drawn to that you just can't do a tiny, no-budget movie with. I would like to pursue some of that stuff, to see if I could do a movie with some of those people. And I don't really write scripts myself, but if I read a script I thought was really great, I would totally be up for doing a more traditional movie. It's just that I don't exist in that world.
right now. — Joe Swanberg

... and Dave and I, we were doing this ... this weird circling thing, like we needed to figure out every single line of the script before we could even start the movie. I knew, and he knew, and we didn't do a damn thing about it ... It's like we thought everything had to be perfect, or it wouldn't work. Like it was a story. — Mira Grant

What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar. — John Lasseter

A writer/director is a tough thing to gauge when someone hasn't directed a movie before. You just don't know. Sometimes it will be a great script that's written beautifully, and then the director who has also written it does not have the facility to translate it. — Richard Ayoade

It's great when improv is encouraged. It's a really fun thing. It depends on who's in the movie and how their process works, as well. It takes a director who is open to that because you have a script, but then something funny could happen on set. So, to have people around you who encourage improv is really exciting. — Lily Collins

But DNA isn't really like that. It's more like a script. Think of Romeo and Juliet, for example. In 1936 George Cukor directed Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in a film version. Sixty years later Baz Luhrmann directed Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in another movie version of this play. Both productions used Shakespeare's script, yet the two movies are entirely different. Identical starting points, different outcomes. — Nessa Carey

I hope to be involved in a successful movie script. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

When I was writing the script, I knew didn't want to make a sports movie. I was very clear that I wanted to make a sibling rivalry story. So when I was writing the script, the football was getting in the way of the drama. One day, I saw Michael Haneke's Funny Games, which is probably the most violent film I've ever seen - but the violence is off camera. When I finished watching the film, I said, 'Hey, that's what I have to do.' Haneke gave me this solution. — Carlos Cuaron

Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.' — Geoffrey Rush

thought about it and concluded that I would go ahead with the venture since Shapoorji was confident about the movie's success. The more I worked on the basic conflict in the script between the brother who has to uphold the law of the country and the brother who flees from the law, which favours the rich and the powerful and unjustly incriminates the poor and the defenceless, the more I felt it was time for me to make a picture that raised some critical issues about the people of rural India who had gained little from the country's independence from foreign rule. The oppressed farmers and tillers — Dilip Kumar

When I auditioned for 'Pitch Perfect,' I didn't know it was a singing movie. I didn't read the script. I go to the audition, and I'm like, 'Oh, it's a baseball movie.' But then I'm reading the lines, and I'm like, 'This doesn't seem like a baseball movie.' — Adam DeVine

Right before Pamela Anderson met Tommy Lee I got this crazy script to do this incredible movie with her where I play this cop with a young partner like Brad Pitt who is in love with Pamela Anderson and he gets killed in the line of duty and she falls in love with me and it gets really crazy. I turned that down. — Hulk Hogan

Getting movies made is not as difficult as people think. Making movies is easy. You get a script, you get a director, you raise the money, you make the movie. — Stephen Baldwin

I knew her work very well and I knew that if she offered me a role in her movie, it wouldn't be something stupid. So I agreed to do the film before I read the script. — Beatrice Dalle

I learned so much about myself from reading this script and doing this movie [Shelter] because the level of judgment and the lack of humanity I saw in myself was disgusting. I never took into account what a homeless person might have been through. — Paul Bettany

And I'm auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I'm reading right now for a horror film, and I'm meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them. — Trishelle Cannatella

Diablo Cody wasn't writing a script about a 16-year girl that got an abortion. She was writing a script about a 16-year old girl that got pregnant, decided to have the baby and give it to a young yuppy uptight couple for adoption. That's what the movie is about. — Ellen Page

A script is just a script. A good script can be a bad movie, so easily. It's the process that makes it good. You need a good script, don't get me wrong, but you need all those other things to make a good movie. You really do. — Joel Surnow

A movie goes from several stages, from idea to script. As you continue shooting, you will make some adjustments. You're constantly adjusting. It's like a piece of music. You're constantly trying to make it better. — Robert Rodriguez

Every time I read a script, I see the movie in my head, and I try to see the best movie in my head because everybody interprets the movie differently. — James Marsden

Since I worked with Danny Boyle before on Slumdog Millionaire, we have great success and everything. So, when I first got the script and the screenplay of Simon (Beaufoy) and I was reading it, even before the shoot, some kind of sounds came into my mind and I put some stuff [down] and sent it to Danny when he was cutting the movie. — A.R. Rahman

Hen Baillie [Walsh, writer and director] wrote the movie for me I wasn't doing what I'm doing today, so when we actually came to make the movie it seemed silly to change it. But who knows? That's the way things go. What was interesting for me - and what was always interesting in the script - was that you've got someone who appears to have everything, or at least has the opportunity to have everything, and he's f**ked it up, or lost it. — Daniel Craig

The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script. — William L. Jenkins

Sticking to my schedule, I've gotten over seven months ahead, which allowed me to write a 'Pearls Before Swine' movie script for the big screen. — Stephan Pastis

I find that the projects I enjoy signing up to at the moment are with a director who's interested in the script - isn't completely sure what the movie is and isn't concerned about it. He's just interested in going on the journey and discovering it. — Brie Larson

I usually decide if I'm going to do a movie based on if I like the script or not. I thought 'Pulling Strings' had every single element that a classic romantic comedy needs to be a success. It's very well written. The cast was amazing. It was a decision I made based on the power of the script. — Jaime Camil

I didn't even think about it when I read the script and then shooting their movie and someone was like "boy, press is going to be fun". And I didn't really know what they were talking about because to me it's just a film shows it as an extremely viable option which is obviously the most important thing for young individuals. — Ellen Page

Well, there's no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie. — Sydney Pollack

Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down. — Kirk Douglas

Aside from a couple of signature flourishes, there's nothing to mark Paycheck as the product of acclaimed action director John Woo. In fact, there's little about this movie that makes it worth anyone's time and money. With a script that waffles between being hilariously absurd and insultingly stupid, and action scenes that won't cause anyone's pulse to skip a beat, Paycheck is less appealing than a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking. — James Berardinelli

Well, I know a guy, he's from far far away
He's a songwriter, he got something to say
He says, "People in this city are too busy to hang out
This town's so spread out, no one would hear you if you shout"
Everyone's got a script to sell and someplace else they want to be
There's always a lock that would open if you could just find the key"
(It Ain't Easy Being Green) — Shannon McNally

I watched a lot of movies from all over the world. The Russians were very good at editing. They were specialists in editing. The Man with a Camera, if you know that movie, is incredible. I still don't understand how it works. It's a movie with no script, no actors and still it works. It's really good. It's really about editing. — Michel Hazanavicius

After I script the movie, I have to storyboard it out, I have to budget it, and I have to understand if I can afford all those visual effects or not. — David Twohy

I've been a film geek since I was a little kid and to start with an idea and then get a stack of papers with words on it called a script, then storyboarding the art, and you sit with these guys and now all the sudden it's a movie, and to see fans reactions to it when you put it out. — Thomas Tull

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling. — Taylor Swift

The first script I got was Narc and I really responded to it; it reminded me of a '70s type movie, I really liked the characters, I didn't anticipate the ending. — Ray Liotta

Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately. — Peter Dinklage

Lego was our fourth film, because we did two Cloudys, so yeah there's a little bit of shorthand that's involved and then you can anticipate things- because for me it's like, I get a script for a movie and I go, "Wow that's a pretty good script", then you sign on and a couple months later they show you the first cut and you're like, "Whoa, how did that happen?" — Mark Mothersbaugh

When you try to be true to the script, changes occur. A script is there to show us a certain direction. But when you actually have the actors in and you start shooting the movie, you have the actor say a line and it doesn't sound right so you change it and make it different. It's the script that gives birth to these changes and the more you try to stay true to the script, the more that happens. — Takashi Miike

If I read a script and I like it, there's nothing that will stop me from trying to be in that movie. — Brenton Thwaites

I was out to have a good time and have some fun. It's a fun script and fun people are in the movie. — Harvey Keitel

Marvel is very secretive, so there was no script. About six months before production, they gave me some pages and it was from a cop movie. And then, six months later, I got a phone call saying, "Do you want to come do this?" [iron Man] — James Badge Dale

I remember when I first met Jason Reitman with the 'Whiplash' script; he quickly became a mentor figure who guided me through the process and also protected me and made sure that when it came time to actually make 'Whiplash,' I was able to make exactly the movie I wanted to make. — Damien Chazelle

The moment that you start to read a script, you're watching the movie in your mind, and that's the one moment that you have. Then, you go off to make the movie and you become so lost in it. — Michael Angarano

I've learnt that I've had the best results from just trying to be me, trying to make a movie or TV show I want to see or write a script I want to read, and that's really all I can offer - being authentic. — Dax Shepard

I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself. — Steve Martin

My older brother always tells me I changed as a person when I saw 'Ace Ventura.' Because when I saw 'Ace Ventura', I became obsessed. I watched the movie as many times as I had to - back then, you couldn't go on the Internet and find the script - so I watched it as many times as I could to write my own script of 'Ace Ventura.' — Eliza Coupe

Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up. — Joe Shuster

Whenever I'm doing any film, there's always three different things. There's the script, which is really just a blueprint. And then, you shoot the movie and it's an entirely different experience than you would expect from reading the script. And then, there's the whole post process and the editing, and it becomes something else entirely. — Thomas Ian Nicholas

Remember this: a simple pen is much more swift and much more precise than a camera. That's my advice to both beginning and experienced authors: don't write with a camera. A camera is slow. All these modern writers usually make the same mistake - they write books with a film in mind. When you read their works, you don't hear the voice of a real author, you hear that horribly cheesy Hollywood voice-over. Frankly, that's not a novel, it's a movie script. If you write books, use a pen. A pen is swift, it has tempo, you can kill people with it. You cannot kill people with a camera, you can only perhaps bore them to death with it. — Martijn Benders

I came from advertising. For me it's about protecting the director's vision. That's always the goal. There's keeping things on budget and on time and dealing with selling the movie so that to me is a focus. But also it's about serving the script. We are genre filmmakers, those are the films we love to make, so my perspective is a little different. — Charles Roven

If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don't know. — Michel Hazanavicius

With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this. — Akira Kurosawa

You know, my problem with most screenwriting is it is a blueprint. It's like they're afraid to write the damn thing. And I'm a writer. That's what I do. I want it to be written. I want it to work on the page, first and foremost. So when I'm writing the script, I'm not thinking about the viewer watching the movie. I'm thinking about the reader reading the script. — Quentin Tarantino

I stick to the script, I memorize the lines, cause life is movie that I've seen too many times. — Lil' Wayne

Making a movie like 'Felony' is hard work because you're really putting your own ideas on the screen. You can't hide behind some other person's script; you're saying, 'This is my brain, and I want you to know what I think'.' — Joel Edgerton

When you did the job, you thought you were just trying to amuse your friends who are all on the job. I'm just trying to make the sound guy laugh, the script supervisor. A movie like 'Caddyshack', I can walk on a golf course and some guy will be screaming entire scenes at me and expecting me to do it word for word with him. It's like, 'Fella, I did that once. I improvised that scene. I don't remember how it goes'. But I'm charmed by it. I'm not like, 'Hey, knock it off'. It's kind of cool. — Bill Murray

Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you're seeing the movie, you know it's something different. — Tom Hanks

I was supposed to have a script, and had mislaid it. I was supposed to hear cues, and no longer did. I was meant to know the plot, but all I knew was what I saw: flash pictures in variable sequence, images with no 'meaning' beyond their temporary arrangement, not a movie but a cutting-room experience. — Joan Didion

It's possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can't make a good movie from a bad script. — George Clooney

The script's always important, but there are some things that have come out in the past year that, when we read them, everyone was like, "Oh my god, this is going to be the next best thing!" Then the movie falls completely flat on its face. — Douglas Booth

When we moved to L.A., I started going out for more commercials, and then one day they emailed me a movie script. The first thing I said was, 'No way. I love commercials.' — Yara Shahidi

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be. — David Cronenberg

Few people in one's life ever go quite away. They turn up again like characters in a Simon Raven novel. It is as if Fate is a movie producer who cannot afford to keep introducing new characters into the script but must get as many scenes out of every actor as possible. — Stephen Fry

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie. — David Hackworth

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting. — Steven Spielberg

I've always sensed what a script should sound like - even before the movie's been made — David Puttnam

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. — Morten Tyldum

In the end, whether I write the script or, in this case, somebody else did, there's a point where you let it go when you're making a movie. You just have to. The thing that you shoot is not what you imagined in your head - it never is exactly that. And it shouldn't be. — Todd Haynes

When I initially read the script, it goes inside and comes out different things even without commenting on any stuff. And then, those pieces are taken out and then spread out through the movie. — A.R. Rahman

What I think after reading the script and seeing where the story goes, I go with my instincts on the character. If my instincts are wrong the director and the producers will guide me in the right direction. That's just kind of how I take on any role, be it a fantasy movie or not. — Josh Hutcherson

When I worked with Woody Allen, I only got the parts of the script that I was in. I was able to piece together the narrative from that, but I remember being quite excited to watch the movie - the movie that I was in but didn't know what happened in, like, 65 percent of. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

When I read the 'Country Strong' script, I thought, 'Can't they just hand-double it? Can't I just do the rest of the movie and not have to do the performing?' It took me six months to learn to sing and play guitar at the same time. — Garrett Hedlund

Every time I do a movie, I'm reading the script, or if it's something I have coming up, I'm reading the script, and I just spend hours and hours and days and weeks and months going over the script and just writing a lot of different ideas down, finding a little dialogue or just coming up with ideas for scenes and moments and all that kind of stuff. — Mark Wahlberg

The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across. — Alex Pettyfer

I never put down a bad script and I never walk out of a bad movie because I'm always hopeful things will change. — Peter Segal

I have been an Avengers fan since the middle 1960s. I grew up with them, and I've imagined a hundred different versions of an Avengers movie. I think I even have a script I wrote back in eighth grade, 'Avengers vs. the Mole Man.' Truly dreadful, but a work of love. — Jonathan Maberry

I did some writing for that movie. The remake of Planet of the Apes. I didn't write the script. But I wrote some lines that they ended up ... not using ... I wrote one line. I thought it would've been perfect. I don't know if anyone saw the movie. It's the scene where the ape general comes in. And they're trying to decide if they should attack right there, or wait until a little later. And I wrote: "Man these bananas are good!" But they didn't use it. I did all of that research. — Brian Regan

When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time. — Dennis Quaid

A movie's very different from the book, and it's different from the script, and it's usually one person's vision. — Casey Affleck

Everything you look at now, the scripts that come in that you look at, the television scripts are way better than the movie script. The talent is going to television. — Denis Leary

It just so happened that my agent called and said, 'There's this movie 'Pitch Perfect.' Here are the sides.' I think I originally read for Bumper, because Donald didn't have much in the script, so I read all Bumper's lines. I beatboxed for them, because that's what my character was supposed to do. And then I was like, 'By the way, I rap.' — Utkarsh Ambudkar

There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's. — Al Pacino

A script is like a theory of a movie. — John C. Reilly

I have a shoebox: for ideas, fragments, snatches of conversation I hear. I scrawl it down, throw the scraps in the box. Every time I start a new script I start picking through the pieces. Suddenly you get five pieces together and think: this is almost the first Act of a movie, if I flesh it out a bit. — Shane Black

I sold my first script when I was 21 - this kids' adventure movie that never got made. I just bought that one back, actually. I'm pretty psyched about it. — Jason Segel

I think the first thing I consider is whether I like the script. Once that is done, the next thing I look for is my part in the movie. Many a times you come across good offers, but the part they are offering might not be challenging. So, I don't take up that film. — Rani Mukerji

Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising. — Christopher Walken

When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he's going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there's one guy: the director. It's different in television. — Holt McCallany

If the script is right, I'm not above doing a movie with broad appeal. — Nicole Holofcener

People would come to me and say, 'Jet, your Kung Fu is pretty good, do you want to be an action star when you grow up?' At 17, I was given the script and I went to make the movie. — Jet Li

The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?' — Michael Caine

Since I was 12 or 13, I have been taking movie meetings finding a project right for me because I wanted to try it. Craig gave us the script - it was set in Wales, it is really British humour. I just loved it. — Charlotte Church

"Admission" is Paul Weitz's movie. This is Karen Croner - the screenwriter's - movie. To have such a lovely role in such a beautifully written script offered to me, it's like elves made the shoes. — Tina Fey

When I got the script to this movie, The Good Girl, I read it in an hour. The writer, Mike White, has an ability to create characters that are so creepy and dysfunctional and human, with this duality that makes people feel empathy for them at the same time. My first thought was 'Was this sent to the right person?' I called my agent. 'Are they sure? Let's say yes before they realize they've sent it to the wrong person!. — Jennifer Aniston

The movie wasn't really derived from Dark Shadows - they developed a whole new script for that particular one. — David Selby

We translated the script together with them. And during the process of translation, they rewrote the scripts. They put a lot into it. They made it their own. There are names of plants or chants or certain rites and everything that you cannot come across it in a movie. You know, you cannot learn about them casually. So the film doesn't have value in the ethnographical, anthropological. It's fiction. — Ciro Guerra

The script was classic Joe Eszterhas, intelligent, steamy and provocative. At one time, Eszterhas was Hollywood's highest paid writer, illiterate rock and roll bad boy whose 14 films glorified sex, drugsa nd cigarettes. Eszterhas also fought publicly with producers and politicians. In 1995 he argued that some of the misdeeds of the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations were more obscene than anything in an "R" rated movie. — David Shuster

They're still working on the script - they've got to get that nailed down and they want the first movie to come out obviously, not get too ahead of themselves. But yeah, it's looking good. I love the second book a lot as well, so kind of diving into that is awesome. — Josh Hutcherson