If I’m 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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
It’s such an egotistical thing to be able to just stand there and say, ‘Action!’ It’s like being a little mini-god. Brian Helgeland Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
