Sometimes I want to do something that's really funny and other times I read an indie script that is going to be made for nothing but I want to do it because I think that I can connect with something in the story.
I've directed 'Raisin in the Sun' five times. You keep discovering things. You keep on seeing things in the script that you never saw before. That's what great pieces of art do.
I've never done a big series like 'Game of Thrones' before. All I knew was that it was HBO, and I'd seen what they had done with 'The Sopranos' and 'The Wire.' But when I started reading the script, it was a no-brainer. Yes, yes, yes. Gold. Every time I turned the page.
The only description for Nolan in the script was that he's a very bad dresser. I put on a red windbreaker and every other ugly, ill-fitting thing I could dig out. He was potentially written as a clean-cut nerd, but I wanted a darker spin.
It can have an enormous effect because big budget movies can have big budget perks, and small budget movies have no perks, but what is the driving force, of course, is the script, and your part in it.
When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.
It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that!
All this flying around got on my nerves. But then I gave the script to Cathy to get her opinion. When she started to laugh, it was like 'That's it!'. I went to LA and I got the part.
We go through, I think, six different drafts of each script. And then my shooting it is roughly, you know, fifteen percent of the total work that gets done on a show. Then it's all post-production animation after that.
We have the script, we have the actors, and we're trying to figure out what this is, and you don't know what it is. You have to be open to what it's going to become rather than have this thing that you're trying to get to, which is boring.
I don't like most Christmas movies. They're pretty bad, though they seem to make tons of money anyway. Like this movie 'Elf,' I got the script for that, and I turned it down right away. Against my wife's better judgment.
I wrote a spec script that people really liked: a political serial based on Jeffrey's Toobin's 'A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.' It was the first thing I had ever written with any political subject matter in it.
It was pretty much the way that it was when I first read it, although one exception would be that some ideas that I had were also incorporated into the script.
I love making 'iCarly' - it's so much fun, and I love getting the script every week and not really knowing what insane thing I'm going to be doing. It's just like an adventure every episode; that's really fun.
People would come to me and say, 'Jet, your Kung Fu is pretty good, do you want to be an action star when you grow up?' At 17, I was given the script and I went to make the movie.
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.
Long ago, I did a five-and-a-half-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week talk show for four years, early on, in Los Angeles - local show. And when you are on that many hours with no script, you know, you get very comfortable, maybe overly comfortable with that small audience.
Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.
One of the interesting parts of being on a television show is you often don't know the fate of your character until you're reading the script. I always look forward to finding out.
You can't make a good movie with a bad script, no matter who's involved.
Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.
We had a script that was really solid and we knew how we were going to shoot and how the energy of it was going to go. So it gave us a lot of freedom to use the camera as a character.
I think if you get your fifth script made, that's the fast track. But there's no guarantee any of them will get made.
When I read the script for '90210,' I thought, 'Boy, this is very superficial,' and it was. I mean, the pilot was all about the glitz and the glamour of Beverly Hills, the obnoxious kids, and the fish-out-of-water story of Brenda and Brandon Walsh. I couldn't discern from that first script that the show would become very issue-oriented.
I do finish reading a script and say, Why are they making it and what are they talking about? I like to try and be responsible in my choices in that way.
Early on, when I wrote 'Little Man Tate,' I got pigeonholed. Somebody said to me, 'You're not very dark,' and I had trouble getting certain kinds of jobs... and I learned very early that I didn't want to get pigeonholed as anything. And my next script was 'Dead Again.'
You read a script and its based on 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', and it goes right in the bin.
There's something about somebody's first screenplay: it's like their whole life experience has kind of been bottled into it. They bring so much richness to it. And not that they won't do that for their next script, but there is something about their first experience and the time that it's been floating in their head.
When the children were little, I'd fly into L.A. for a specific work project, but then I'd leave again, and when I was home, I wouldn't even read a script.
I choose my work very carefully, always for the script and the director, and I don't think that's going to change. My work is like a house. It's built on very strong poles.
Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.
You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it's like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen.
I'm always going with my visceral reaction when I read a script. I am more drawn to characters who are conflicted, and in developing a character exploration. If it's a baddie, I'm rarely intrigued, and if it's a goody two-shoes - too much of a good guy - I'm not, either.
I had a feeling about directing Cocoon II: The Return. At first I wasn't too interested because it was a sequel. Then I read the script and was excited by the relationships and its mystic quality.
My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.
I haven't heard anything about a reunion show for Sisters. But if the script was good I would do it.
