James L. Brooks Quotes

[Screenwriting] is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.

I took some time out for life.

I had a marketing idea that everybody hated, decency is sexy.

Things get very distorted when you do a movie, weirdly so.

I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.

You become so obsessed, and that's not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it's the whole world.

I value comedy. I value somebody who can be funny.

Kids in general make things fresh and alive and they have this great appreciation for, Holy mackerel, we're making a movie!

A lot of things just aren't true any more.

It never stops, accepting that fact is difficult. I took some time out for life.

I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens.

The thing that usually gets me through the writing is that my feelings of wretched inadequacy are irregularly punctuated by brief flashes of omnipotence.

I think you have a pact with an audience in every picture, and I think the pact is to try and be truthful and to be real.

Once you read the script, it's the only way it can be.

I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.

Great things that can happen when you're doing a movie.

When you produce and direct your own film you havethe somewhat consoling feeling that the producer will kill for you.

Media reporting denied privacy to anybody doing what I do for a living. It was no longer possible to work on your picture in privacy.

I have a lot of nightmares.