You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.
'50/50' is a comedy. I shouldn't say it's a buddy comedy because it's not farcical, and it's based on a true story, but it's viewing that experience through a very truthful lens of humour.
I actually carry a little picture of a wolf in my wallet, rather like people carry a picture of their kids. The reason I do that is to remind myself why I'm doing this, to remind myself of the story.
You take out an injunction against somebody or some organisation and immediately news of that injunction and the people involved and the story behind the injunction is in a legal-free world on Twitter and the Internet. It's pointless.
Hopefully, by the second or the third film, who my father is won't be a story anyone's interested in. They'll either like the films or they won't, and if they don't like them, I won't be making them any more.
In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.
The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.
If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.
I didn't know 'Homeland' was going to be 'Homeland.' I just did it because it was a terrific script, and they pitched me the story line, and I was like, 'Huh, that's interesting.'
There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure I'd ever write a short story again because I had started writing novels, and I am fundamentally a lazy person, and the fact is that a novel is a lazy person's form, really. That is, you can amble; you can digress.
On 'The Daily Show,' we get so caught up in the day-to-day news cycle. A story breaks, and then the piranhas in late night, we all jump to the headline, and we dissect it, and then we have to move on to the next day.
With faith and courage, generations of Armenians have overcome great suffering and proudly preserved their culture, traditions, and religion and have told the story of the genocide to an often indifferent world.
A short story is something that you can hold in your mind. You can really analyze how the entire thing works, like a machine.
I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.
I have always tended toward a lush prose style, but I take care to modulate it from story to story and to strip it down entirely when necessary.
The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good.
I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story 'greater than the sum of its parts.'
I tried to keep it secret, but the story got into the newspapers. It was more difficult for my family, who couldn't understand why the media wouldn't leave me in peace.
I love meeting new people; I think everyone has a story to tell. We should all listen sometimes.
The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
The problem is there are so many stories out there where I can pull that superhero out, put any other superhero in, and the story works the same. For me, that's broken. I have to write a story that no one else but Aquaman or Shazam can be in, and as soon as you pull that character out and out someone else in, it doesn't work.
The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story.
As far as I am concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.
When something is dramatized, it provokes a much more emotive response than just hearing a story on the news.
You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don't go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.
It is gorgeously shot, and Andrew believes that the old school way of making films in the best way. Meaning: you have a story, and you stick to the story. You don't change and alter the story because of people who've invested in it and what to put product in a shot.
I came up with a story and I wrote it.
When I was a young kid, my father was a big fan of Hollywood movies. He would make me watch movies with him, and he would explain the story and characters to me.
In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.
There is a plethora of topics to explore. I sometimes think I may never live long enough to explore all of the unique story lines I have either in my head or waiting in my computer file.
I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales.
The real problem is arranging that experience in a way that tells a story, which is just incredible enough to be interesting, but credible enough to be believed.
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
Everyone's story is different, and we can't really be inside them.
You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.
I see lots of cycles, for sure. There's the whole post-Star Wars era, but I don't think it's the whole story.
