Quote

If a novelist has created vivid characters, interesting relationships, settings the reader can easily imagine, and intriguing stories, a screenwriter has loads to work with. The challenge comes with deciding what to cut and what to keep.

It's really hard as a screenwriter, you feel like you have a vision and then you turn it over to a director and you have to let it go.

Fundamentally, I always find that most of the films that I've put out are essentially the director's cut. Part of the process with a director's cut is the leaving behind of certain aspects of the movie that we don't feel necessary because they aren't part of the dynamic of the story.

It's hard writing screenplays.

The hardest part of directing is the choosing. Unlike an actor who can do a variety of work, it is a year of your life, you can't afford to get it wrong.

The filmmaking process is a team effort. A screenwriter cannot possibly do exactly what he wants as if he was writing a novel.

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.

I keep saying this, but the most important part of directing is casting, and the rest of it is pretty easy.

A film is a chain of very difficult decisions, and I think one of them is to choose an accurate cast.

When the scenes are written really great, we as actors try not to mess them up by getting in the way.