Quote

I don't think the latest Star Wars pictures have any artistic intentions, but the original picture opened up epic science fiction.

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
Stars
Originals
War
Artistic
Science
Original
Think
Pictures
Latest
Thinking
Intention
Epic
Star
Intentions
Picture
Opened
Fiction
Wars

More quotes by William Monahan

Image
I never viewed screen drama as a vulgar form, or a lesser one, and I've never written it left-handed.
William Monahan
Image
When I'm shooting, as much as writing, I see edited footage in my mind, so I work that way, and it's economical.
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
By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency.
William Monahan
Image
Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything.
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
Some reviewer might be out there saying, obviously Edge of Darkness didn't come off because of the script, blah blah blah, but everybody has read the script, except the journalist attacking it.
William Monahan
Image
Out of all of the Star Trek movies, I happen to like the most recent one the best. I think it was the best one ever done.
William Monahan
Image
You don't write for actors. Actors come for characters you've made up.
William Monahan
Image
If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldn't be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like a novel made for the screen and things like that.
William Monahan
Image
Doing crime films...maybe it's to some extent a matter of taste. Certainly my first novel had a criminal element and was about the similarity of criminals and artists. Pretextually, it was sort of a money bag thriller. But it was aggressively not what it seemed to be. It was kind of Duchamps.
William Monahan
Image
Even though a screenplay is performed only once, unlike other forms of drama, it's still a performance in itself, and unless it's a great performance, odds are that actors will not come, and a movie will never be made.
William Monahan
Image
I can work in London. A British journalist asked me if I had any trouble working with an English crew, as an American, and I said I might have if I was from Scotland, but I'm from Massachusetts, which is sort of Oxfordshire, but more intellectual. That's kind of unforgivable but you've got to let them have it.
William Monahan
Image
I'm usually the first guy to propose a change because I'm continuing my process. We're in a context, in this business, a context in which most screenplays work on a very modest level of achievement, in that a lot of them aren't really written by what you would call writers.
William Monahan
Image
Whatever you cut when there's no deadline isn't really a cut. You're just pushing colors around.
William Monahan
Image
Casting is always subject to availabilities.
William Monahan
Image
The novel ceases to be looked at as a novel. Such is the overwhelming power of motion pictures. Gore Vidal pointed out that the movies are the only thing anybody's really interested in. The association with movies and movie money can, and certainly did in my case, occlude a novel as a novel.
William Monahan
Image
In all honesty a gangster picture was the easiest kind of film for me to get made.
William Monahan
Image
I think probably everybody works most on the beginning and the ending.
William Monahan
Image
As a director, you're given a tremendous apparatus to work with, and very great talents are available to you.
William Monahan