Quote

Novelists who get shitty about screenwriting invariably can't do it, or they can't hack it in the world of what's really, in truth, very bold and very public enterprise.

William Monahan

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Monahan
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: November 3
Critic
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Claude La Badarian
Bold
Novelists
Enterprise
Public
Truth
Hack
Really
Shitty
World
Hacks
Invariably

More quotes by William Monahan

Image
I shoot very little film. If you just do coverage you're shooting any number of potential films instead of just one, and I was shooting just one specific film. Film is cheap but time is expensive.
William Monahan
Image
I don't have an aversion to quote unquote remakes, because I understand what dramatic writing is, what the dramatic profession has always been about, which is talent, not the pretext for its exhibition.
William Monahan
Image
In all honesty a gangster picture was the easiest kind of film for me to get made.
William Monahan
Image
My gratitude to Ridley [Scott] isn't anything new. I named one of my kids after him. But he's a very important person to me.
William Monahan
Image
It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.
William Monahan
Image
Casting is all about availability, as much as anything else.
William Monahan
Image
T.S. Eliot, who learned to swim at the same beach as I did, just threw in the towel and moved to Cheyne Walk. I'm not going to do that but I'm not scared of the open channel between me and Britain.
William Monahan
Image
When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.
William Monahan
Image
Get Carter is a classic, but it did nothing in the United States. It came out on a double bill with a Frank Sinatra western.
William Monahan
Image
I'm not very precious at all, which I think people find surprising.
William Monahan
Image
I write drama in the English language. If I wasn't working in London I'd be doing something wrong.
William Monahan
Image
For some reason, I seem to work well with actors. I love working with them.
William Monahan
Image
I think probably everybody works most on the beginning and the ending.
William Monahan
Image
Redrafts can be very lucrative for me, but you must understand that if films go through many drafts or writers it's because someone doesn't want to do the picture and never will.
William Monahan
Image
I was always entirely about work, about getting where I am now. If I'm not working I'm thinking about it, though at some point I learned not to talk about it very much.
William Monahan
Image
You're not turning the picture over to a system or a process, you are the process, and the most important thing is to have things exactly as you want them.
William Monahan
Image
I'm not a precious text protector, or anything like that, you know, because it's a much more vital form than that. You have to rock.
William Monahan
Image
I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.
William Monahan
Image
When they see you get what you want and move on, quickly, you've done a contract with the crew from that point. In Britain if the sparks call you Guv on day two, you never need an award of any other kind.
William Monahan
Image
Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.
William Monahan