Nowadays they have 12 directors and 15 producers and 30 writers. And all the writers want their lines said a certain way-which isn't necessarily funny. I mean the lines aren't necessarily so funny to begin with.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Too many writers get stuck in the trap of writing what they think is funny and not considering who they are writing it for.
If an executive producer has written a certain line, and an actress says it, and it's not very funny, you don't dare go to them and say, 'I don't like this,' because it will make your life miserable.
People who do not have funny in them are not funny when they read funny lines. Sorry. Just doesn't work that way. Seriously, this is the biggest rule of all. You live and die with your casting decisions. Your actors are the heart and soul of the whole thing. Without brilliant actors, you will not have a brilliant film.
There's a constant dialogue going back and forth between the filmmakers and the producers.
I can tell you that from the director's chair, young actors love to be challenged, to be given killer lines that take time to wrap their mind around.
Realistically, it's the great truism that screenwriters are fungible, that at the end of the day a studio is not going to want to fire a movie star. And they're really not going to want to fire a star director because the director has the hand on the tiller of a ship.
Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.
I don't like actors who try to talk directors into making their part bigger and that's really lame.
I find it kind of weird that directors want to put themselves in their films.
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.