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Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.

Very often, things that people may think come from the writer, very often don't. There's a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie. When you hear a line of dialogue that sounds kind of tinny, it's pretty easy to cite the screenwriter. But there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a movie.

A lot of directors keep writers away because the writers know the script better than anybody, obviously they do, and they have certain intents. But a lot of people would be surprised to know that writers are pretty flexible when it comes to their work.

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.

I have always thought if you are going to make a film, it's much better to have an original script that will play to film's strengths.

All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.

Everyone in Hollywood has a screenplay.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays.