Brian Helgeland
Brian Helgeland
Brian Thomas Helgelandis an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is most known for writing the screenplays for L.A. Confidential, Mystic River, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Helgeland also wrote and directed 42, a biopic of Jackie Robinson, and Legend, about the rise and fall of the Kray twins...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth17 January 1961
CountryUnited States of America
writing years film
I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year.
thinking sometimes periods
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.
writing thinking world
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?'
lying long okay
It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.
catalog head less plot until written
I'm not like a Sears Catalog of ideas. I don't have that many ideas. I've more or less written them over the years. Usually, I come up with a situation or a character, and it rattles around in my head until the story or the plot emerges.
believe unless writers
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.
Movie dialogue is movie dialogue. It can sound real, but no one speaks that way.
cut
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?'
across angeles bookstore conceived ended growing guide knowing los loved movies realizing
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.
broad constant cottage great insurance middle money spending studio
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.
amusing ignores mean people start throw version
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.
again dug hit
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.
aware cool guy newman paul reads riot separate
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.
cool dead dean good guess kevin martin played
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?'