“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”
—Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)
“A screenwriter friend of mine said your number one goal is to get to the end. So write it fast; don’t look back. If you have to have characters yak about something and you don’t have a solution, do it anyway and let it suck. Then go back over it in a couple of weeks, and you’ll be much clearer on what’s strong and what’s not strong and then attack the ones that are too verbose. At least you’ll have a laundry list of things the audience needs to know—but don’t hang up on finding the visual solution and not move forward on your screenplay.”
Oscar-winning writer/director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille)
Interview with Peter N. Chumo II
creative screenwriting magazine, November/December 2004
“My thing has always been—and I’m lucky—in that I like to write. Everyday, it’s not a problem. I do the same routine every morning—9:30 I sit down and open the laptop until 1:30 I’m going. Doesn’t matter if I think it’s sh*t. If I’m in a groove, or it’s like pushing the boulder up the hill. Even when it’s garbage, I don’t stop to re-read it. I don’t really stop to think about it. My dad always used to say, ‘Head down, ass up, and just keep moving forward’—and that was it. Then I’d discover—you do that for four hours you think it’s garbage, but I made a commitment to myself a long time ago—who cares if it’s garbage? I’m not going to share this with anyone. No one is ever going to see this if it’s garbage. . . . So then the next day I’ll go back and I’ll re-read the garbage I wrote before, and let’s say it’s four pages of what I thought was garbage—somewhere in the middle when the story took over, it’s like, I’ve got two scenes in the middle that are pretty good. I can build off of that. And that’s the process everyday.
Filmmaker Edward Burns
The Moment with Brian Koppelman podcast interview
Recap:
—Write it fast
—Don’t look back
—Let it suck
—Find a nugget of gold in the trash
—Move forward
Scott W. Smith