Brian Helgeland Quotes
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I write R-rated action dramas, and every year that goes by, that gets to be a smaller and smaller world you have to work in. You have to think of how to get the studio excited and sell them something.
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I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.
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Because I've been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.
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Its as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.
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For me in a film, almost every scene you end up cutting a bit of the start of it out, and some of the end of it out because there's always...once you've rehearsed it and shot it, it feels like a couple of times and you can always get out sooner.
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In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.
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Its such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, Action! Its like being a little mini-god.
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I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'
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As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm... it's hard for the audience to relate to them.
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I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.
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In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.
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If you write an original, its like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, its like the oil wells on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.
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I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.
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If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?
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I know a lot of directors have a whole staff of people trying to find their next film for them. I always just end up writing mine.
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I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.
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It's always once the script's done in the first two years if it doesn't get going somehow or another, I've never had an old script that someone's made later on.
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It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.
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