Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

Being a working person who works for the studios. It's a minefield and there's tons of stuff you need to know. And people mess it up all the time.

If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important.

Before any movie of yours gets made, it will be vetted by the studio's marketing department. So, you do have to answer the question: Who is your movie for?

That's the other thing about working on movies, the commitment is years. That's one thing that's so frustrating about the process is that it goes on and on and on for years.

The more people's money you take to do something, the more inputs you get.

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.