How To Write a Movie

1. Write a play instead
2. Do the title first
3. Read it to people
4. Forget the three-act structure
6. Don’t write excuse notes
7. Avoid the German funk trap
8. Do a favourite bit
9. Cast it in your head
10. Learn to love rewrites
11. Don’t wait for inspiration
12. Celebrate your invisibility
13. Read, read, read, read, read

Frank Cottrell Boyce

On Invisibility

“Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.”

– Jean Cocteau

“we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense”

“Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance … not that I’m interested in reassuring people – bugger that.”

– Great interviews of the 20th century: Dennis Potter