William Monahan Quotes - Page 5

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• I think the only real referent for anybody writing drama is probably Hamlet. You have the most extreme tragic drama, this sort of blood-boltered thing, but it's also very funny, which is simply a matter of the playwright being alive and observant and entertaining, and understanding not only the world but what will play.

  William Monahan

  Real, Drama, Writing

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• You never know what people are going to go and see.

  William Monahan

  People, Knows

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I have a lot of stuff that I never published because I always had a sense that novels were not finally going to be the way I made my living, because the form was dying commercially.

  William Monahan

  Dying, Stuff, Way

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I sound like Warhol but only because I'm tired.

  William Monahan

  Tired, Sound, I'm Tired

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• I never write with particular actors in mind.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Mind, Actors

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I started out as a writer with an hour removed from Kingdom of Heaven. You have to make one print for the entire world, and that's something that influences the theatrical cuts of pictures to an enormous degree. It's a reality. You can't have one cut for the Sunni, and one for the Shia, and one each for Tories, Whigs, vegetarians, one cut for the Cineplex, and one for literary intellectuals.

  William Monahan

  Cutting, Reality, Heaven

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• All of a sudden I pulled up short and harked back to Ridley [Scott] holding up the script in Manhattan, at the St. Regis breakfast room, and saying, "It's very visual, isn't it," and realized it was the key to my whole life since then.

  William Monahan

  Keys, Manhattan, Breakfast

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• You don't write for actors. Actors come for characters you've made up.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Character, Actors

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• Casting is always subject to availabilities.

  William Monahan

  Availability, Casting, Subjects

  Source: collider.com

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• The only answer to "Are you Beatles or Stones?" is, "I'm both."

  William Monahan

  Answers, Stones

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm interested in stories about human beings. I don't care where or when they are set.

  William Monahan

  Stories, Care, Humans

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I can work in London. A British journalist asked me if I had any trouble working with an English crew, as an American, and I said I might have if I was from Scotland, but I'm from Massachusetts, which is sort of Oxfordshire, but more intellectual. That's kind of unforgivable but you've got to let them have it.

  William Monahan

  Scotland, Intellectual, Massachusetts

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't like scripts leaking. On the other hand, the more real attention a script gets, the better.

  William Monahan

  Real, Hands, Attention

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Even though a screenplay is performed only once, unlike other forms of drama, it's still a performance in itself, and unless it's a great performance, odds are that actors will not come, and a movie will never be made.

  William Monahan

  Drama, Odds, Actors

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• The old days of screenwriting, and myths about screenwriting, are maybe over. It's a literary form, if you can wake up to it.

  William Monahan

  Wake Up, Form, Myth

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Novelists who get shitty about screenwriting invariably can't do it, or they can't hack it in the world of what's really, in truth, very bold and very public enterprise.

  William Monahan

  Novelists, World, Enterprise

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I never viewed screen drama as a vulgar form, or a lesser one, and I've never written it left-handed.

  William Monahan

  Drama, Form, Vulgar

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.

  William Monahan

  Writing, Firsts, Odd

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not a precious text protector, or anything like that, you know, because it's a much more vital form than that. You have to rock.

  William Monahan

  Rocks, Form, Knows

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• The thing about movies is if somebody has an idea that works, it's in, and I say that as a screenwriter as well as a director.

  William Monahan

  Ideas, Directors, Working It

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you're a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry.

  William Monahan

  Thinking, Stuff, Scripts

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

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