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Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you're seeing the movie, you know it's something different.

Normally, when I read a script, I read 30 pages, and then go have a cup of tea and come back. And then, I read 20 pages and go make a phone call, and then go back to it.

As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I'm interested I'll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision.

It's very different when you're reading a script to when you're watching a movie for the first time.

If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.

Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.

If you get a book which is 600 pages, you have to reduce it to a script of 100 pages. In two hours of film, you cannot possibly include all the characters.

With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.

Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down.

The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it like a child discovers a new world.