It's hard to hand a script to a director, there's no question about it. You've lived with these characters, you've started with a blank page, especially when it's an original work and something not based on a preexisting piece of material. But if you don't like it, write a novel.

You have to accept that the moment you hand a script to a director, even if you've written it as an original script, it becomes his or her movie. That's the way it has to be because the pressures on a director are so staggering and overwhelming that if he or she doesn't have that sort of level of decision making ability, that sort of free reign, the movie simply won't get done. It won't have a vision behind it. It may not be your vision as a screenwriter, but at least it will have a vision.

You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.

Your favorite story, whatever it might be, was written for one reader

Sometimes you go against what they say because you believe in it anyway.

Believe me, you can be in the middle of a beautiful take and the next thing you know you're awash in people crossing the street. You can't even find your actors.

It's funny when you put music up against picture, and all your preconceptions go away, and you start over. You just realize that that doesn't work at all.