There's always a great hue and cry when you sign onto a "remake," and that's always been sort of annoying me and freaking me out. This profession that we're in is drama. What drama has been since the beginning is, you restage plays with new casts, or a writer will take a new run at an old story.
William MonahanI had a guy at the Groucho bar clawing at my arm nearly in tears saying that until he saw The Departed he thought Americans were the ones on TV. I didn't know you had accents. I didn't know you had a class system. I didn't know you were like us. To which the answer is, probably only where I grew up, but while we're at it don't watch television and think it's the United States of America.
William MonahanActors are players and if they're hot, or onto something, you let them go, or you and the actor can both get on to something. I always run out with lines as I think of them.
William MonahanI came into screenwriting from an odd direction, because the first screenplay that I read was and is better as writing than the top one percent of literary novels.
William Monahan