Almost every scene, I re-think as I'm about to start drawing it, and at least half of the time I'm changing dialogue or whatever, or adding scenes or different things.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I tend to edit some as I go - partly because one of the reasons I don't outline much is that I don't know what the next scene will be until I've actually written the previous scene.
I'll usually see a scene in my head, playing like a movie trailer. After I've written that scene, everything takes off from there.
Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.
When you're working on a huge, elaborate set that took months to create, and you're surrounded by hundreds of extras, you better remember your lines and know what you're doing in a scene!
I write scenes - often quite long scenes - mainly because I still get seduced into writing six lines where one and a half will do.
For me, the movie's always evolving as I'm doing it. I throw things in as we shoot, and I take things out as we go. I want to create a whole life and then select the pieces that best sort of describe it later, you know? So there's a lot of wastage when I make a film.
A lot of times, I'll resist the temptation to visually define a movie until, one, I really understand just what the movie's about, and two, until I start talking to my cinematographer.
For me, when I start a novel, I only have a general sense of what I am going to do - usually three or four big scenes or something to which I can really respond emotionally.
When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.
For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.