I love editorial and sound and music, and I was working with the best people, so you learn a lot. William Monahan More Quotes by William Monahan More Quotes From William Monahan Get Carter is a classic, but it did nothing in the United States. It came out on a double bill with a Frank Sinatra western. William Monahan classicunited-statesbills There were days when you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald. Video was out, but nobody could afford it...expect for my uncle George, who was a second father to me, and had every film in the world, and every book. William Monahan unclesfatherbook When I was very young, you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald, and you would basically go through them, circle things, and map out your viewing week. William Monahan mapscirclestvs I learned my job from English dramatists. Tennessee Williams was no good for me, New York stuff was no good to me. William Monahan tennesseenew-yorkjobs 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 scriptsstuffthinking 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 runningmovingthinking 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 schedulesablemoving I always write as I like to write, and I've been thinking about it because I honestly didn't realize how different my stuff is, until I started looking at other people's scripts as a producer. William Monahan writingpeoplethinking When I started writing screenplays, as early as I started writing anything, I hadn't seen any ordinary screenplays. I saw movies and figured out how I thought they should be written. William Monahan sawsordinarywriting By the time someone gave me some samples of standard screenplays I was already beyond that stuff, because I was not only a tinkerer in ways to do things, I'd started from Dylan Thomas. As a screen dramatist he was a very intense visualist, with great timing and fluency. William Monahan fluencystuffway If you see, as I do, in edited film, you're going to end up as a director. William Monahan filmendsdirectors 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 oddwritingfirsts I never viewed screen drama as a vulgar form, or a lesser one, and I've never written it left-handed. William Monahan vulgarformdrama 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 enterprisenovelistsworld 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 mythwake-upform 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 actorsoddsdrama I don't like scripts leaking. On the other hand, the more real attention a script gets, the better. William Monahan realattentionhands 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 scriptsfilmpeople 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 rocksformknows The thing about The Departed, the x-factor that people can't quite put their finger on, is that it deals clearly with class and accent all these things that are fundamental to Boston, but previously anomalous or even prohibited in demotic American films. William Monahan bostonclasspeople
