WRITING FOR FILM: Great Filmmakers on the Art of Screenwriting

“Look for the contradictions in every character, especially in your heroes and villains.” – Elia Kazan

“When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.” – Alfred Hitchcock.

“Often the personalities in my scripts don’t want the same thing I want. If I try to force them to do what I want them to do, it will always be an artistic catastrophe.” – Ingmar Bergman.

How do the great filmmakers approach writing for the screen? How were the best screenplays written? Where did the spark of creation come from? What makes a great script? From Alfred Hitchcock to Stanley Kubrick, from Akira Kurosawa to John Cassavetes and the Coen Brothers, this book presents the thoughts of ten great filmmakers on screenwriting and tells us, in their own words, how they went from an initial idea for a film, through to a fully-realised project, with the key steps in between. The purpose of this book is to motivate you to think about how you tell your own story, to learn from the great filmmakers about the stages of their creative process, and to be inspired by their insights on writing for film.