42 Quotes by Brian Helgeland

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

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.

The studio is spending great amounts of money, and they want some insurance they will get money back. They go for the middle of the road, broad in appeal. It's restrictive. It's a constant struggle, but if you give in, you're just making cottage cheese, and that's the end of it.

I was in a bookstore one afternoon, and I stumbled across this book called 'A Guide to Film Schools.' I always loved movies growing up and had never even conceived that it was something you could do for a living. Realizing most of them were in Los Angeles and knowing that was warm, I ended up applying.

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?'

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.

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

Movie dialogue is movie dialogue. It can sound real, but no one speaks that way.

There are plenty of writers who are going to become a director after their next job, but no one will believe you're a director unless you believe it.