Top 18 Quotes by Brian Helgeland

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.

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.

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.

Working on an adaptation is not as satisfying, because it's not your original work: you're interpreting. With 'L.A. Confidential,' I loved the book. In that case, I felt I was guardian of the work, staying as true to the novel as I could. I've since met the novelist, and he loves the movie and the script.

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.