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Quote by Paul Schrader

“All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies.”

Quote by Paul Schrader

Author

Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader

Paul Schrader is an American screenwriter known for his profound philosophical insights and unique narrative style. His works often explore moral and religious themes, having a significant impact on the art of film. more

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“I took many notes, more than usual before I sat down and wrote Act One, Scene One. I had perhaps eighty pages of notes. . . . I was so prepared that the script seemed inevitable. It was almost all there. I could almost collate it from my notes. The story line, the rather tenuous plot we have, seemed to work out itself. It was a very helpful way to write, and it wasn't so scary. I wasn't starting with a completely blank page.”

“I've never written a fiction before about real people. . . . I read everything that I could find by people who met them and tried to get some impression of them, but as always when you write fiction, even if you have completely fictitious characters, you start by thinking of what is plausible, what would they say, what would they be likely to do, what would they be likely to think. At some point, if it is every going to come to life, the characters seem to take over and start speaking themselves, and it happened with [COPENHAGEN].”