William Monahan Quotes About Film

Quotes about: Film

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Redrafts can be very lucrative for me, but you must understand that if films go through many drafts or writers it's because someone doesn't want to do the picture and never will.

William Monahan

Want, Film, Ifs

Source: collider.com
It's been very much in the blood since I started imagining films or shooting with 8mm when I was a kid. I made some films and thought about films, but then I went into writing. Becket is something that's definitely on the cards. We have to see where that fits in the schedule, because it's a big picture and I have a lot of writing obligations at the moment. I'm wary of anything with a budget over a certain amount.

William Monahan

Writing, Kids, Blood

Source: collider.com
If you change a location opportunistically, to gain a day on the schedule, which I did more than once, you have to re-rig everything creatively on the spot, and you not only have to be able to do that, but do it with great fluency to keep moving. I used to go apeshit when anything got changed in a film but you live and learn, and I have learned.

William Monahan

Moving, Schedules, Able

Source: collider.com
The first time I ever thought about doing a film seriously, I was in London. I was about 17 years old. I was just standing in the street, a bit dazzled by an Antonioni bus wipe, which by the way are inherent in London, and I imagined a film set in London starting out with the riff from The Yardbird's "Heart Full of Soul", and now, how ever many years later, I've done it.

William Monahan

Heart, Years, Soul

Source: collider.com
Most films go out like skydivers who have had their chutes packed by a committee of blind schizophrenics.

William Monahan

Film, Blind, Committees

Source: collider.com
I have no reason as a director to have films go up in versions that I don't like. My only experience of film after ten years is honestly that if a picture doesn't get second-guessed you're looking at four Oscars, and if a picture does get second-guessed, you're not. I've got an advanced degree in that lesson.

William Monahan

Years, Directors, Degrees

Source: collider.com
If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director.

William Monahan

Directors, Film, Ends

Source: collider.com
I'd been working so hard making the film that I hadn't even emotionally processed the fact that I was a director.

William Monahan

Directors, Facts, Film

Source: collider.com
I didn't have anything to do with selecting IFC. I don't have anything to do with distribution, or business, or marketing, but think it's a good choice by Graham, and perfect for London Boulevard. It gets the picture straight into a dialog with the public, and it doesn't set the sights too high. They're very hip at IFC, and they get the film. The cineplex hasn't done film any favors as an art form.

William Monahan

Art, Thinking, Sight

Source: collider.com
I shoot very little film. If you just do coverage you're shooting any number of potential films instead of just one, and I was shooting just one specific film. Film is cheap but time is expensive.

William Monahan

Numbers, Shooting, Littles

Source: collider.com
In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.

William Monahan

People, Scripts, Film

Source: collider.com
I had a long writing history behind me before I got into anything in film. It comprehended science fiction, it comprehended historical, it comprehended, you know, just about everything that you can think of.

William Monahan

Writing, Thinking, Long

Source: collider.com
I cut London Boulevard pretty aggressively, but I liked the transitions and the elliptical feel that I got. It's not an exceptionally easy film to follow. You have to know that the paparazzo looks like Mark David Chapman. He hasn't got an expositional sign on him.

William Monahan

Cutting, Transition, Looks

Source: collider.com
When I was a kid in London there was just something about the light and there's something about the way London went onto film in those days, whether it was Technicolor or Technicolor plus the flatness of the light, or whatever.

William Monahan

Kids, Light, London

Source: collider.com
I don't think Roger Ebert has ever mentioned a screenplay. He assigns every auctorial move to the director, which makes some sense since the director has run a one-off game, but if Hamlet were written last year and had been only performed once as a film, and it didn't come off well on screen for whatever reason, it would be gone forever as a literary work, and never would have been considered as one.

William Monahan

Running, Moving, Thinking

Source: collider.com
If you're playing around with a film, you're just playing around with it. But if it has to go into theaters, you get yourself into gear and finish it.

William Monahan

Gears, Film, Theater

Source: collider.com
I'm a huge fan of director's cuts or reassemblies if they're good, but I remember being really excited about the restored version of Apocalypse Now, and then I preferred the original film. Kingdom of Heaven as a director's cut is the real picture, but in fact someone recently told me that there was another cut, the original first cut, which he said was just extraordinary. I've never seen it - and of course now I want to, if it exists, and so would everybody else.

William Monahan

Real, Cutting, Heaven

Source: collider.com
London exists normally in a state of bleach bypass. There's the artistic context of "Blow Up" and "Performance" and all the Sixties and Seventies British films that I grew up on, because I did very much grow up on British films.

William Monahan

Growing Up, Blow, London

Source: collider.com
In all honesty a gangster picture was the easiest kind of film for me to get made.

William Monahan

Honesty, Kind, Film

Source: collider.com
I don't watch anything. I work so much. If I see a film, it's usually that I'll go in after working 15 hours and slam in The Bridge on the River Kwai or something.

William Monahan

Bridges, Rivers, Watches

Source: collider.com
Doing crime films...maybe it's to some extent a matter of taste. Certainly my first novel had a criminal element and was about the similarity of criminals and artists. Pretextually, it was sort of a money bag thriller. But it was aggressively not what it seemed to be. It was kind of Duchamps.

William Monahan

Artist, Criminals, Bags

Source: collider.com
There's only one way to prep, so far as I know. You have your script, you hire the people you want, you find your locations and your setups, everybody shows up and you shoot the film.

William Monahan

People, Want, Way

Source: collider.com
It wasn't just British gangster films that really did for me as a kid, personally, it was British films in general.

William Monahan

Kids, Film, British

Source: collider.com
I'm in the film industry, and I very seldom go to the theater now. It could be work, not being in New York, that sort thing - because in New York, you do go to theaters; you can walk to a theater and then walk to a restaurant. But in places you have to drive out to the cineplex to see a movie, it's starting not to be worth it anymore. It's like the days when you went to get a book at the public library. You don't have to do that anymore. You just go on your iPad and all of a sudden you're reading The Duchess of Malfi.

William Monahan

Book, Reading, Library

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com
If I can give a young author any advice, whatsoever, never let anyone announce the film sale of your first novel. Film rights are sold to almost every novel, but it shouldn't be the lead story in your first engagement with the press. Then you end up getting reviews like "a novel made for the screen" and things like that.

William Monahan

Rights, Giving, Advice

Source: collider.com

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Born: November 3, 1960
Occupation: Screenwriter
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