Quotes & Sayings About Movie Scripts

I have been sent three or four scripts for television series, but there wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I want to tell a good story, whether it's a TV show, a movie, whatever. That's really my No. 1 criteria. — Jorge Garcia

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie. — Todd Phillips

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

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

I learned that you really don't have any control as a writer. Waah, waah, waah. Big deal. Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control. As someone who's just writing scripts, you just kind of have to shrug. I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general. It is what it is. — Bret Easton Ellis

And when I first started writing, it was literally in acting classes. And what would happen is now it's really easy to get scripts and stuff but back then, you know, oftentimes you'd buy the novelization to a movie if you wanted to get an idea of what the scene, you know what happened in the scene. — Quentin Tarantino

And then, movie-wise, I'm writing a couple of things. They're all comedies. It's the only way I know. I'm also being sent scripts, which is really nice, kind of off the back of this, so I don't necessarily have to generate my own stuff. I'm just looking for something that's explosively funny and relatable in equal measure. — Dan Mazer

My closet is full of sad little scripts that didn't get made that have sad endings. It's very hard to get a movie made that has a sad ending. — Nora Ephron

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

The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process. — Topher Grace

I wanna do a movie! Anything that I connect with, really. I read scripts, I've taken some acting lessons, and I feel like that's definitely my next goal. — Avril Lavigne

Nobody goes to a movie and watches the script. There is a lot of other stuff going on. — Ben Affleck

It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me. — Jake Gyllenhaal

You can't get a movie made without a script; it's the blueprint to your building. — Bruce Campbell

Nobody is out to sabotage an entire script and do an improvisational experiment of a movie, but when they're feeling something in the moment, let them make it their own. That's what makes them great actors. — Dan Fogelman

I try to read everything that's sent me - play scripts, movie scripts - but I've had to make a rule. If the author hasn't grabbed me by Page 25, the piece goes back with a note of apology. — Hume Cronyn

It was easier to do Shakespeare than a lot of modern movie scripts that are so poorly written. — Jessica Lange

My scripts are always filled with notes. I like to just analyze everything from the point of view of the whole picture, of the movie, my whole picture. — Geena Davis

One thing that I don't think I do is play characters. Once you start claiming that you can do something that you're not, you're crazy. I think scripts can really surprise you. You go, "Wow, I did not know that that response could come from me. I did not know that I had that in me." And so, the process of making the movie is just finding that and digging a little deeper. — Kristen Stewart

I think the books are the books. They were conceived as books. They weren't conceived as movies. When I write scripts, that's an idea and a situation that I think is a really good idea for a movie. When I'm writing a book, I'm not thinking, "Oh, this would be a great movie." This would be a very interesting book. And I think the books are things that cannot really be adapted into another medium. — Bret Easton Ellis

Television is a great job for a writer in the way that movies used to be, way before my time. Back when writers in Hollywood were on staff or under contract at any given studio and you'd write movie scripts and then the movies would get made within a few weeks, such that you could be a working writer in the movie business back in the '30s and '40s and '50s and have a hand in writing five or six movies a year that actually got produced. The only thing remotely like that in the 21st century here in Hollywood is working in the TV business. — Vince Gilligan

In writing scripts now, having made a film, I'm much more conscious of what it means to shoot and edit a movie, and that affects the writing. — Josh Radnor

When I read a script, I am already in the movie with my music, and I can dive into a world that I haven't seen before. — Volker Bertelmann

Hollywood is in control of politics and has imported their action-filled movie scripts into the real world. — Kim Dotcom

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays, and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater, where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts, but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts. — Jason Reitman

I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood. — Manuel Puig

Almost all movie scripts contain material that cannot be filmed. — David Mamet

I was originally casted to be in the Superman movie but I read the script and realized that it was mysteriously similar to my screenplay for Zach Braff the Movie. — Zach Braff

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects. — Andy Serkis

You can have a great script, or a great director and a bad script, and get a great movie. Nothing really guarantees anything. — Douglas Booth

I quit doing the movies because the wrestling was going so good and was so on fire during the '80s and '90s, but I was getting all these movie scripts. — Hulk Hogan

At the end of the day you do have to write a short novel beforehand, called a script, before you can make a movie. — Louis Garrel

I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts. — John Waters

A lot of actors choose parts by the scripts, but I don't trust reading the scripts that much. I try to get some friends together and read a script aloud. Sometimes I read scripts and record them and play them back to see if there's a movie. It's very evocative; it's like a first cut because you hear 'She walked to the door,' and you visualize all these things. 'She opens the door' ... because you read the stage directions, too. — Al Pacino

I've never known a situation in my career where a terrible script turned into a movie that was out of this world or was a success. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Ever since the movie premiered at Cannes, I've had a sudden surge of scripts and interest. — Berenice Bejo

I remember reading 'Disturbia,' one of the first scripts I ever got, and I go 'Pfft, who wants to make a movie about a guy in a house?' — Alex Pettyfer

Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script. — Hans Zimmer

I find that most of my scripts have a lot more scenes than most films, so the average movie might have 100 scenes, my average script has 300 scenes. — Steven Zaillian

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

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

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

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

I write plays instinctively. I don't like writing movie scripts. — Jesse Eisenberg

I'd like to think that I have a plan, but you can't really pick what scripts you're going to get or what movie is going to come along. — Jennifer Lawrence

The scripts for Marco Polo are absolutely, positively fantastic. The challenge of making that show in China has proved to be as formidable as we feared. It's not like making a movie in China where, once you load up and you leave, you're gone. We have to be able to come back and capture something that's going to feel like a major feature film, on a television budget, and do it, hopefully season after season, so we are taking more time than the producers thought. — Chris Albrecht

Most aspiring screenwriters simply don't spend enough time choosing their concept. It's by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months - sometimes years - are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie. — Terry Rossio

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

Yeah, the main goal when I'm writing [movie scripts] is to entertain myself. It's supposed to be funny, but then a funny idea can be turned into something else. — Quentin Dupieux

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

Listen, if you are an entrepreneur who is passionate about your product, but you never ask anyone to buy what you are selling, it will never get sold. Sure, there's a possibility that you can deliver your best sales pitch in your best Sunday suit and they will still say no. But so what? Do you know how many times I've been told no for movie scripts, television shows, and comedy specials? A whole hell of lot more times than I heard yes. — Steve Harvey

I had read the scripts that Nora Ephron had written as a movie about Mike McAlary. We were never able to make it at HBO because we couldn't cast it properly and when I left I called Nora and said, "Look, I actually think that the movie luckyguyindustry has changed. It's very unlikely that you'd be able to make this as a movie. I actually think it's a play." — Colin Callender

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

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

I'm a great fan of Michael Mann and when he asked to see me I couldn't believe it. I was very happy. I met him and I read this beautiful script. I didn't know anything about Dillinger. I fell in love with the movie and Michael Mann. — Marion Cotillard

For me, it was the challenge of doing a movie that is in one location. Usually, there are a few scripts obviously always going around with stories that happen in one location. — Jaume Collet-Serra

It was a sort of organic thing. I never went, 'I must be an actress.' I thought, 'I think I could do this. I think I could be good at this.' I would just get sort of hungry when I read something I thought I can do well, whether it was in books or in scripts or if I saw a certain movie. It sort of happened quite naturally. — Alice Englert

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

Yeah, when you're making a film, the book is a good tool, but once you have the script and you're making a movie, you have to let go of the book. — Jennifer Lawrence

Well Getaway was a script that was submitted to us for production and I read it and thought it would be a cool movie to make. — Courtney Solomon

People think you're like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you're hustling, you're desperate, you're panicked and you're horrified. The movie you think you're going to do next, you don't do. The movie you think you're never going to do, you make. — Guillermo Del Toro

I think the part I enjoy most is reading the scripts and screening films because I'm a bookworm and a movie buff. — Rebecca Eaton

When I'm working on a movie, I'm in my trailer playing guitar. And then on the road, I read scripts and think of ... it just keeps both fires burning. I kind of need both. — Bryan Greenberg

For all filmmakers: True originality is the key, only direct your own unique movie scripts, be a megalomaniac and not give a damn. — Tom Six

I love the gangster genre, but how many gangster movies are there? If I get a good gangster movie script, I'll do it. — Graham King

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

The hackers who hacked into Sony have leaked the upcoming script for the new James Bond movie. Some of the executives said the news left them shaken but not stirred. — Conan O'Brien

There's nothing better than finishing something and looking at it. Whether it be a script or a movie, it's this complete little thing that now exists and is hopefully immortal. — Cary Fukunaga