Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
You don't write for actors. Actors come for characters you've made up.
William Monahan
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William Monahan
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: November 3
Critic
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Claude La Badarian
Come
Writing
Made
Characters
Actors
Write
Character
More quotes by William Monahan
I went into directing having observed and learned from the best. There was a certain standard of procedure. I found that I was equal to it. I thoroughly enjoyed directing, I liked it a lot. It's very satisfactory to see that you can do it. The art takes care of itself.
William Monahan
For some reason, I seem to work well with actors. I love working with them.
William Monahan
Saying directors don't write because they don't type is very wrong, it's like saying Dylan doesn't write music because he doesn't write notation.
William Monahan
I'm interested in stories about human beings. I don't care where or when they are set.
William Monahan
Because you're running an enterprise with two hundred-odd people, and it's really your responsibility to keep it moving quickly. So you have to know what you're doing, do it, and move on.
William Monahan
If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.
William Monahan
If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it's an educated audience as well.
William Monahan
There's only one way to prep, so far as I know. You have your script, you hire the people you want, you find your locations and your setups, everybody shows up and you shoot the film.
William Monahan
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
As first time director, though, you're like a new officer coming up to be in charge of very serious veterans, and you're always going to have guys looking at each other for the first day until they realize you're not screwing around.
William Monahan
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
I don't think the latest Star Wars pictures have any artistic intentions, but the original picture opened up epic science fiction.
William Monahan
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
I never write with particular actors in mind.
William Monahan
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
You can believe in originals only if you just don't know their context within literature. Certainly I believe in originality, but it lies with the teller, not the tale.
William Monahan
As a director, you're given a tremendous apparatus to work with, and very great talents are available to you.
William Monahan
When I started writing screenplays, as early as I started writing anything, I hadn't seen any ordinary screenplays. I saw movies and figured out how I thought they should be written.
William Monahan
In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying the script this and the script that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.
William Monahan
I don't move until an actor is happy, but it was very important to me as a so-called first time director to keep the machine moving. It was especially important to me to keep it moving and not be some kind of precious writer-director.
William Monahan