When migraines briefly became a campaign issue for me, it appeared that political foes were maybe playing the gender card.
Film is a collaborative business: bend over.
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery. '
Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
So much of the time I'm cast as an asshole or a douchebag, or that kind of thing. I'd like to go back to just playing a guy with a good heart. Usually so much of my stuff is ulterior motives or a dark thing to it. Maybe that's what other people see in me, but I feel like I have a warm side, too, humor and fun. I'd like to play a little bit more of that. Feel-good stuff. Why not?
Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.
I started writing morning pages just to keep my hand in, you know, just because I was a writer and I didn't know what else to do but write. And then one day as I was writing, a character came sort of strolling in and I realized, Oh my God, I don't have to be just a screenwriter. I can write novels.