“'Lord of the Rings' was going on; like, my college years were the years of 'Lord of the Rings,' an awesome time to be in film school.”
“A script is a unique literary form, because it's not the end product; it's a blueprint. If you're not thinking of that end product, there's going to be a disconnect.”
“I loved 'Star Wars' as a kid, but I missed out on the experiences of seeing them for the first time. It was before my time, and 'Lord of the Rings,' that trilogy felt like something similar to what 'Star Wars' was for previous generations.”
“Reviewers are certainly entitled to their own opinions. I've become buddies with enough writers and directors, and to be perfectly honest, the ones that have lasted a long time don't pay a lot of attention to the reviews.”
“That TV show, 'After Thought,' is really exciting. It's a cross between 'Inception' and 'CSI' that I'm working on with Melissa Rosenberg from the 'Twilight' movies.”
“The absolute base-level thing that you do as a new screenwriter is send out query letters. Literally, you just say, 'Hi, Mr. So-and-So,' and you give them a one-sentence description of one of your scripts. You send it out to a list of people you found on the Internet.”
“Very often, things that people may think come from the writer, very often don't. There's a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie. When you hear a line of dialogue that sounds kind of tinny, it's pretty easy to cite the screenwriter. But there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a movie.”
“As a writer, you sit around a computer all day, and it's too easy to open another tab and keep Rotten Tomatoes there.”
“I never really knew that I would be a lifer of strong female characters, but that seems to be the drops I'm being given, and I'm very happy for them. Hopefully, 'Divergent' will be the next thing.”
“I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page.”