I was a little concerned that a lot of people thought I wrote Merchant Ivory movies. I also thought if I was ever going to write something strange and difficult, that was the time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had grown up loving movies and had always wanted to write them.
I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.
I've always scribbled, and I still do it. I've written numerous scripts for films for which I think I'd be perfect as the complex, intelligent and, yes, modern heroine. Embarrassingly bad, all of them. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a writer.
I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.
I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.
I was an outsider, never quite part of what was going on, always looking in. It turned out to be great preparation for writing fiction.
I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.
I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.
I wish I could sit back and say, 'Oh, I'm gonna wait for a Merchant-Ivory film to come my way. Or Ivory-Merchant. Whatever it's called. But you just take what's given and then, hopefully, down the road you can be more choosy and only do, say, Wayans brothers movies. That's my goal: to be more Merchant-Ivory-Wayans.
I had novels to write, so I wrote them.
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