Until I came along all the leading men were handsome, but luckily they wrote a lot of stories about the fellow next door.
When you're playing a real person there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.
In business, you can have one massive success that earns $50 million overnight, and that's it. You're successful. End of story. But in the music business, you have to keep on doing it.
In the beginning, I would find a character I understood. That was my focus. Not now - but you basically get offered the exact same thing you just did. Which I find hilarious. I did 'The Vow,' and then I had every love story you can imagine thrown at me. And now I'm getting offers for comedies.
I wanted wherever possible to lean into the comic form and do things in the story telling that could only be done in comics and which pay homage to the many strands of comic and visual storytelling tradition.
Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.
I've done so many movies with first-time directors, and honestly I just go with gut instinct. People that usually can tell me a good story, and talk to me about why the movie is the movie they want to make. I just go with my gut.
It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.
It's nice to know when you're a part of a story, it's nice to know at least something about the beginning, middle, and end.
As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself - because you cant possibly please everyone.
Forget about writing to Penthouse. This one was going to be a story for their grandkids.
You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story.
The myth of the inevitability of economic globalization is based largely on the work of Milton Friedman, and easily the most underreported story of our time is that the current economy proves Friedman flatly wrong.
[On the Adam and Eve story:] They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
I remember a point in [writing] the story where I said, "This isn't working, I should go and buy something at the supermarket or my wife will kill me. " Then I said, "No, I'll go on. "
People want to join a great story. If you want to lead, tell one with your life.
Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.
I'll tell you a secret. Old storytellers never die. They disappear into their own story.
Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.
I just think it's a great world to tell stories in, to tell cool stories: money, sex, fame, and scandal. Those are great subject matters to work with.