From actors, screenwriters and
directors, here are some helpful insights to get your mojo going and next
project started!
1) Steven Spielberg
“You can't start a movie by having the
attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is
finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.”
2) Matthew
McConaughey
“You want to be a writer? Start writing.
You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.”
3)
Quentin Tarantino
“When I'm writing a script, one of the
first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.”
4) Diablo Cody
“Don’t ever agonize about the other writers who are
ostensibly your competition. No one is capable of doing what you do.”
5) Ridley Scott
“Never be put off by anything because failure
teaches you something.”
6) Joss Whedon
“I write to give myself strength. I write
to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m
afraid of.”
7) Morgan Freeman
“Sometimes you want to upset an audience so you can
engage them. If your story's complete it doesn't have to have a happy ending.”
8) Lena Dunham
“I have to write people who feel honest
but also push our cultural ball forward.”
9) Bryan Cranston
“What's great about well-written
material is, if you can shock with justifiable actions, that's the best.”
10) Harvey Weinstein
“People love a true story and especially
where two people from opposite worlds come together.”
11) Amy Poehler
“Great people do things before they’re
ready. They do things before they know they can do it.”
12) James Cameron
“Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No
matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your
sister star in it. Put your name on it as director.”
13) Will Smith
“Whatever your dream is, every extra penny
you have needs to be going to that.”
14) Danny Boyle
“To be a film-maker, you have to lead.
You have to be psychotic in your desire to do something.”
15) Mindy Kaling
“Twitter is the most amazing medium for
a writer. It's a way of getting out other ideas and immediately getting
feedback.”
16) Sofia Coppola
“I try to just make what I want to make or what I
would want to see. I try not to think about the audience too much.”
17) Stanley Kubrick
“If it can be written, or thought, it
can be filmed.”
18) George R. R . Martin
“One of the big breakthroughs was
reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, ‘You must
finish what you write’.”
19) Kathryn Bigelow
“With each project, I'm going for something that makes
viewers think, 'Wow, I've never seen a film like this before.”
20) Steve McQueen
“I like to start a sentence and let it
take me, the characters and narrative dictate how I film a scene.”
21) Peter Jackson
“The most honest form of filmmaking is
to make a film for yourself.”
22) Rashida Jones
"My writing partner implements a
no-phones-for-an-hour rule. It seems utterly ridiculous but the rule
helps."
23) Spike Lee
“I think it is very important that films
make people look at what they've forgotten.”
24) Tina
Fey
“If you want to be a screenwriter, take
an acting class to get a sense of what you're asking actors to do.”
25) Martin Scorsese
“The most important thing is how can I
move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in
storytelling with moving images and sound?”
26) Steve Jobs
“The only way to do great work is to
love what you do. Don't settle.”
27) George Lucas
“A director makes 100 decisions an hour.
If you don't know how to make the right decision, you're not a director.”
28) Kerry
Washington
“I really love research. I feel like
it's me in the lab cooking up the character.”
29) John
Lasseter
‘Everything I do and everything Pixar
does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period.’
30) Clint Eastwood
“Respect your efforts and respect
yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly
under your belt, that's real power.”
31) Darren Aronofsky
“A good ending is the most important
thing because that’s what people are leaving the theatre with.”
32)
J.K Rowling
“Be ruthless about protecting writing days. Do not
cave in to ‘essential’ and ‘long overdue’ meetings on those days.”
33)
M. Night
Shyamalan
“I love my stories being multi-layered,
and coming from different angles, so that you don't understand the film's true
emotional motivation until the very end.”
34) Sam Taylor Wood
“I'm motivated every second by my work;
it doesn't switch off.”
35)
Robert
McKee
‘Secure writers don’t sell first drafts.
They patiently rewrite until the script is as director-ready as possible.”
36) J.J. Abrams
“I’ve always liked working on stories that
combine people who are relatable with something insane.”
37)
Clive
Barker
“Gather experience. Look at what you
should not look at. Anxiety is evidence that you should do this.”
38) James Gunn
“I don't know if there is any one secret
to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and
discover what you can write that no one else can.”
39) Christopher Nolan
“Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image the audience is seeing.”
40) Lee Daniels
“When I make movies, I don't ever go out there to please anyone other than myself.”
41) Anthony Hopkins
“I'm most suspicious of scripts that
have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page.”
42) Tim
Burton
“Visions
are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?”
43) Bryan Singer
“There's no point in making films unless
you intend to show us something special.”
44) Ed Catmull
“You are not your idea, and if you
identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are
challenged.”
45) Nicholas Cage
“To be good you have to be something
like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules and strive for something
new.”
46) Zack Snyder
“Origin stories are really important to
me. If you don't have that stuff, it's kind of a one dimension version of it.”
47) Ang Lee
“Sometimes, you
have to get angry to get things done.”
48) Kate Winslet
“Any form of self-expression is half
confidence, half sheer hard work and a bit of talent thrown in.”
49) Heath Ledger
“If you're just safe about the choices
you make, you don't grow.”
50) Robin Williams
“No matter what people tell you, words
and ideas can change the world.”
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