Latest Alex Garland Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The thing video games had to learn was to write, which is not to let people choose their own stuff, but actually prescribe it. To say, "This character is not a blank canvas that you can project onto. I'm going to tell you what this character is like. And I'm going to tell you what happens to them. You're going to feel involved in other ways." Video games made the mistake of thinking everything had to be projectable, and this doesn't do that at all.

  Alex Garland

  Mistake, Writing, Character

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I can kid people, including myself, into believing that something on the page will work. But when you film it, you just think, "Oh ...".

  Alex Garland

  Believe, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I used to think about video games, "This is clearly an amazing, new narrative medium, and it's going to be mind-blowing when people get to grips with what's possible within this medium." It took us a century to get really good at film. Video games are at a much earlier stage.

  Alex Garland

  Thinking, People, Film

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's one massive problem with coming from writing novels into screenplays that I've discovered over the years, which is that you've got too much facility on the page. In novels, you can persuade people of things that work that don't really work.

  Alex Garland

  Writing, People, Problem

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I never feel a huge need for backstory in my novels or films. Quick sketches are often enough. When you encounter people in life - like a chance encounter at a bar or wherever you happen to be - you make these incredibly quick, quite intricate decisions about people based on very small amounts of coded information. We're good at that. Long descriptions prior to meeting someone or as you're getting to know them almost don't work.

  Alex Garland

  Long, People, Decision

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The key relationship for writers in film is producers, because those are the first two people involved and the ones who work on it intensely in a private way without the big machinery of film.

  Alex Garland

  People, Film, Producers

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The truth is, I hadn't grown up really wanting to be a writer. The whole thing was a weird aberration in some ways, and I didn't feel personally connected to the level of success I had with it - the success of sorts, I guess.

  Alex Garland

  Truth Is

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• My first attempt at writing was very unstructured and formless, with shifting points of view. I was trying to understand how long form might work, and I realized I had something shapeless. It was a total car wreck. But I still felt I could pull it off. So I ditched that attempt and started writing in the opposite manner, in first person, with a driving narrative.

  Alex Garland

  Writing, Long, Car

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com