Working on an adaptation is not as satisfying, because it's not your original work: you're interpreting. With 'L.A. Confidential,' I loved the book. In that case, I felt I was guardian of the work, staying as true to the novel as I could. I've since met the novelist, and he loves the movie and the script.

Brian Helgeland

Categorized in : You Loved Book Work

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

Brian Helgeland

okay long lying

I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'

Brian Helgeland

writing world thinking

As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm... it's hard for the audience to relate to them.

Brian Helgeland

periods sometimes thinking

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.

Brian Helgeland

film writing years

I write R-rated action dramas, and every year that goes by, that gets to be a smaller and smaller world you have to work in. You have to think of how to get the studio excited and sell them something.

Brian Helgeland

writing drama thinking

Its such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, Action! Its like being a little mini-god.

Brian Helgeland

able action littles

I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

Brian Helgeland

writing hands thinking

For me in a film, almost every scene you end up cutting a bit of the start of it out, and some of the end of it out because there's always...once you've rehearsed it and shot it, it feels like a couple of times and you can always get out sooner.

Brian Helgeland

film cutting couple

If Im in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?

Brian Helgeland

bookstores pages cutting

Its as boring to see a completely evil villain as it is to see a completely good guy.

Brian Helgeland

villain guy evil

If you write an original, its like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, its like the oil wells on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again - or something like that.

Brian Helgeland

oil fire writing

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

Brian Helgeland

fighting dog thinking

In exchange for ten years of being on top, I'm gonna end up in prison or I'm gonna end up dead, and there's something fascinating about that.

Brian Helgeland

prison ends years

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can.

Brian Helgeland

suffering writing thinking

Because I've been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.

Brian Helgeland

credit scripts long

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking for them.

Brian Helgeland

scripts two years

It's always once the script's done in the first two years if it doesn't get going somehow or another, I've never had an old script that someone's made later on.

Brian Helgeland

done two years

I know a lot of directors have a whole staff of people trying to find their next film for them. I always just end up writing mine.

Brian Helgeland

writing trying people

I think when I start out writing, I always try to write the version of the movie that I want to go see. I don't mean it in a way that ignores the audience, but I really set out to make a movie that I want to see and that, hopefully, other people will want to go see it. So whatever's amusing to me, I guess, I throw it all in there.

Brian Helgeland

think me people way

I don't really write with living actors in mind. I guess I write for dead actors. I'll think of like, you know, Burt Lancaster would be good in this part, and so on. With 'L.A. Confidential,' it was like, 'Wouldn't it be cool if Dean Martin played the Kevin Spacey part?'

Brian Helgeland

good cool you mind