'Homefront' was written by Sylvester Stallone. He actually wrote it for himself, which is, for me, an amazing privilege: To be handed a script by Sly that he wrote for himself, that he asked me to do.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.
Sylvester has a great popular sense, as good as any writer I've ever worked with. He knows what audiences want to see, and what they don't want to see.
Some people, especially literary people, they think, 'I'll write this original script, and it will be full of ideas. I'll submit it, and they'll hire me for television.' That's not the case.
A lot of our favorite comedies in general are usually directed by writers, whether or not they wrote the original script themselves.
I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.
I'm just a hired actor who was hired for a particular job, but I think one of the joys of reading the script was the way that the personal and the global are woven together.
When there wasn't a lot of work, I wrote a screenplay, 'What Lies Beneath,' which got noticed and got me more acting jobs. As I got more jobs, I was able to make my own films. That ethos of making my own work has provided me with a lot of opportunities.
I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.
The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.
House was the first film where I had no influence on the script. I had to buy the script with the game rights.