42 Quotes by Brian Helgeland

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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?'

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

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.

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.