The Script Best Quotes & Sayings

I feel I do my best work when it's all there on the page, and I feel that the character is very vivid as I read the script and I'm not having to create stuff and trying to cobble together something. If I have to do that, then I don't entirely trust what I'm doing. — Guy Pearce

We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene. — John Schlesinger

People who made their dreams come true didn't simply go after it. They changed the person they were, in order to fit the type of person that would live that type of dream. — Shannon L. Alder

I mean, the first 'Back to the Future' is kind of a perfect script, I think, in terms of handling time travel the best. It depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story. — Rian Johnson

I think probably the best example was the year Jack Palance dropped down and gave us push-ups when he accepted his award for supporting actor. Then we got to throw away a lot of the script because we just did Jack Palance jokes, because it was just too delicious, watching this old man carry on like that. — Bruce Vilanch

David Fincher is probably the best comprehensive director in terms of being a manger of a process that must drive forward. He has such confident command of cinema language and visual language and script and performance. He knows more about f-stops than any cameraman, he knows more about lighting than any gaffer, he is a wonderful writer, and he can give you a good line reading. Under pressure, he is the kind of guy who you will just dive in with and trust and follow because his vision is so intense. — Edward Norton

Sometimes having no script, having no idea what is going to happen next, having no map, might be the way to go. Because life just happens, and when it does, how you handle it will teach you more about who you are than any class or test ever can. The best preparation for the rest of your life is, maybe, no preparation at all. Dive right in. Make mistakes. Break a few rules. Wing it. — Valerie Thomas

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could. — Alex Graves

Sometimes the best thing you could do is a real bad film ... you could improvise all over the place and probably only improve the script. — Bruce Glover

With a bad script and even the best cast, the most you can hope for is to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. — John Rhys-Davies

Prayers are prophecies. They are the best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life. — Mark Batterson

It's important to read as much as you can because you never know when you will find the best script that you want to do next. I'm always quite picky in what I read and what I go for. — Douglas Booth

Sitting opposite Steven Spielberg, while he turns the pages of your script and talks about each scene as he goes, is about the best film school you can get. — Matt Charman

Yeah, you can be the greatest
You can be the best
You can be the King Kong banging on your chest — The Script

Professor Irwin Corey had some of the best timing in the world, and that is something you can't steal. He talked nonsense, not punch-lines, per se. It was a great performance thing he did and his timing was impeccable. Pat Paulsen was a master of comedy too. The Smothers Brothers' strength was not in the content, but how it was said. We had a couple of our albums, including the Purple Onion album, translated in script form. It didn't work at all. It is no wonder that writers had a hard time writing for the Smothers Brothers, because they wrote impressions, but there was something else. — Tommy Smothers

Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one. — Method Man

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way. — Rian Johnson

Before 1975, if you knew the name Howard Sackler it was because he was the author behind the 1969 Broadway play The Great White Hope, which won Sackler the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle award as the year's Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A friend of film producer David Brown, Sackler accepted the offer to do a re-write on Jaws author Peter Benchley's script for the film version of his novel. Sackler's main contribution to the story was the back story that the shark fisherman, Quint, derived his hatred for sharks from having survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in July of 1945 (in the film, Quint errantly states the date as "June the 29th, 1945"). — Louis R. Pisano

I want to do something where the script is there. That doesn't mean that I won't need to come in, or be asked to come in, and help develop something. Things can always get better. There's always room for improvement. But, I want to do something that's the best version of whatever it's supposed to be. — Steve Antin

The Los Angeles Citizen-News (5/29/58) concurred, but felt the picture had more serious problems in the story department: Unfortunately, the story, as adapted for the screen comes off less praiseworthy, for most of the time the picture is not a little confusing. The story line is not easy to follow. ... Vertigo is technically a topnotch film. Storywise, little can be said. Hitchcock does as well as he can, considering the script, in a directorial capacity. Vertigo is not his best picture. — Dan Auiler

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

Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director. — Sally Hawkins

Too often we assume that what is "best" means that our children should live their lives according to the script that has worked for us. Without realizing it, we try to create carbon copies of ourselves. — Charles F. Boyd

'Killing Pablo' to me - as much as I love 'The Grey's script - 'Killing Pablo' to me is the best thing I've ever written. — Joe Carnahan

I would be sad if it ended now. It's been the best job I've had by a long shot, especially creatively because the writing is so good. Every week I get the script and I laugh out loud and get excited for the different stuff we get to do. — Sarah Chalke

And below, the notebook filled with fine cursive script, laying out in strict order conclusion and delusion, mingling myth and science, drawing from learned men and legends, all of it based on the power of dreams. To any casual observer, it could be either a muddle of half-thought-out nonsense or, at best, the outline for a clever-silly novel. Only to me did it have the look of a careful, deliberate plan. In — Diana Gabaldon

We have our own script. We have our own calendar. We represent the greatness of Africa's past. We also represent the worst of Africa's present, in terms of poverty. It is the best and the worst of African reality. — Meles Zenawi

Gabe pulled the card from the envolope.

I want to help you.

He flipped the card over.

You are the best thing to ever happen to Vernon.

Then in the tiniest script were words that Gabe had to squint to read:

PS. The dog's name is Guppy. — Audrey Shafer

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

The script was just the best I'd read in a long time and I love the humor, which I wasn't expecting, and I like the fact that my six year old daughter can see the show without being, you know, protected from it. — Stephen Collins

The best author is a dead author, because he's out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need. — Stella Adler

The best lines always comes out when it is not in the script. Its like when one writes - each word forming sense in a sentence dies to make its purpose alive within you. — Nikhil Sharda

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script. — George Clooney

You read a script, you try and think through what is the best, most wide-ranging way of telling the story: who stylistically, character-logically, psychologically fits inside the world of what you're trying to do. A lot of it, when you're casting, is trying to get yourself in the head of a director. — Scott Rudin

I don't see the script as just a springboard for my interpretation. You do your best to serve the vision writers have - not by removing yourself from the equation, but by trying to filter what they intended through your artistry. — Joe Mantello

When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read. — Victor Garber

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could. — Tom Wilkinson

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value. — Sally Phillips

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated. — David Ayer

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

You're looking for the best way of shooting it, but sometimes the best way of shooting it is changing the script. — Jose Padilha

Some of the best writing I've done, whether I'm shooting a story or thinking of a script, I write it in my head as I'm running. Running literally jogs my brain. — Natalie Morales

Particularly, the actors, to have analyzed the script in great detail from the point of view of their specific character. So that they have a handle on exactly where the character is in the chronology of things. In that sense the actors become your best check on the logic of the piece, and the way in which it all fits together. They become essential collaborators. The main thing is you have to work with very smart actors. — Christopher Nolan

When my film went to the Venice Film Festival and won the best script writing, the jury [prize], it didn't go to my head. I know how many black filmmakers that I am operating with whose name will never be mentioned. But I'm part of them in that silent existence. — Haile Gerima

I reject the word 'script' entirely-at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage-usually scenario-which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming. — Jacques Rivette

You have to leave the window open for better classeas to come along as you go. You can't grow too proud of your script. You have to let the thing shape itself. It guarantees the best classeas will always be used and it also keeps you from going braindead. If you grow bored and uninspired working on something, the audience will be able to tell. — Don Hertzfeldt

I learned one thing from De Niro: He taught me to listen. Nobody says anything strictly from the script. It's improvised. It was the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my life. It has helped me through the past thirty years. — Cathy Moriarty

I don't really look for a script and go, 'I need to do a thriller, so I'm going to do this.' I just read scripts and look for the best possible story. — Alex Pettyfer

You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story. — Jeff Lemire

Don't send me your script if you want me to play the black best friend. I just won't do that. — David Oyelowo

I really choose by what I like, i thought 'Alexander' was a super smart script. Just [costar] Steve [Carell] alone would have been enough. Gosh, I love working with that guy. He's just the best. — Jennifer Garner

The best thing for me is, when I'm not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines. — Christopher Walken

In one of the extras that come with the DVD version of the movie (Groundhog Day), Danny Rubin, who came up with the original idea and then wrote the script, says that the movie is about "doing what you can do in the moment to make things better instead of making them worse." Which might not sound like very much, but it's just about all you can do in life.

Which only proves that the world itself runs on Yiddish-speaking principles: the best way to get what you want and make all those bastards out there so jealous that they'll want to poke their own eyes out is to go out of your way to be nice to those bastards. That's the way to show them. That's how a mentsh gets revenge. — Michael Wex

I'm not disciplined in terms of scheduling. I work best late at night, but I can't do that when I'm on a TV show - our hours are roughly 10-6:30, so I have to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. So I'll sometimes write fiction for an hour or two in the evenings, or several hours on the weekend afternoons - unless I'm actively writing a script for the show I'm working on, in which case there's no time to write fiction at all. — Nick Antosca

My job as an actor is to serve the script. If I'm looking at it as to see what the best character is, then it's not really looking at the big picture. — Frank Grillo