RON CLEMENTS: Ron would make a distinction by asking the question: is the idea itself bad, or is the execution of the idea bad? Very often, poor execution can cause an essentially good idea to be missed. On the other hand, sparkling execution can cause you to hang onto a something that is essentially wrong (another version of 'kill your babies.') Ron also spoke of the necessity in a film for quiet, for scenes that are purely visual -- they allow the audience to process the information given, which helps them buy into the story more fully. Wall-to-wall exposition and action can leave an audience reeling, and exhausted.
JOHN MUSKER: there is a relationship between the simplicity of the intent of a scene, and the amount of fun you can have telling it. Simple scenes and plot moves are valuable, because it allows more freedom for characterization, more 'elbow room' in the telling. Complex story points eat up space, and can limit a sequence's entertainment value (unless the complexity itself is the attraction). Sometimes it's better to choose a simple, clear story and tell it fully, than a complex story which forces the storytelling to be sparse.
SANDRA BULLOCK: Sandra was insistent that every character in the script have weight, have a point of view, some clear attitude to give the actor something to play. As writers, we may look at minor characters as functional chess pieces, aids in getting the story to happen. Sandra came to even the most minor characters from the point of view of the actors -- who would have to breath life into the role, make them unique, make them believable, make them real.
JOHN McTIERNAN: McTiernan's rule for exposition is so good it bears repeating: solve exposition problems by making the audience curious about your story. Once the audience is intrigued, you're no longer giving them exposition -- you're answering their questions.
NEIL GAIMAN: he made an important distinction between 'plot' (what happens) and 'story' (the way you tell the audience what happens).
JAN De BONT: he worked with a story element I'd never considered, yet important when you think about it. Call it 'off screen movie time.' Jan paid close attention to what you could imply had just happened before the scene started, or was going to happen after the scene ended -- or what had taken place somewhere else while the scene you were watching was going on. He was very aware of what sort of events could be allowed to happen 'off screen' (important sections of the story that the audience didn't really care to see) and what things you had to show, or the audience would feel gypped. ...
As a storyteller and director, Jan was concerned with filming just enough of the tips of the icebergs to convey the greater story underneath. It's almost as if an entire second movie takes place 'in between' the scenes you show -- like in prose writing, the unwritten meaning between the lines. The mark of a good movie is when as much happens off-screen as on-screen... and you don't miss it.
DEAN DEVLIN: My favorite quote from Dean: "In this town, the ability to read a script well is as rare as the ability to write a script well."
TED ELLIOTT: It's crucial to keep character dilemmas unresolved all the way through to the end of the movie, along with the unresolved plot. There's such a temptation when you set up a character issue to resolve it too early. You want to see those people reconcile, to solve their internal dilemmas; but you have to keep pushing yourself to not play that card (and it's a fun card to play!). You have to hold back. If you resolve the character stuff too early, the plot stuff at the end turns to just be plot, usually action without meaning. And that's boring. Hold back, hold back, and resolve character issues at the same time you resolve the plot, and keep your audience interested till the end.
ROBIN WILLIAMS: In recording sessions you could see Williams had the ability to 'hold' one series of ideas in his head (the main dialog of the story) while another part of his brain played riffs and variations, different each time through.
It was oddly reassuring for me to realize that in some cases there is just simple raw ability -- and since there's nothing to be done about it, it's nothing to worry about. "Don't let what you can't do stand in the way of what you can," John Wooden said, and it's true. And it was good to see that not everything Williams tried worked -- and after playing with it a while, if he couldn't make it happen, he'd move on, confident in his talent, confident that he could find something else great down the line.
WALTER PARKES: ... one way that Walter looks at a scene -- whether or not, aside from all the other concerns, it has story momentum. Until we worked with Walter, I'd never considered momentum as an important element, in there with theme, plot, and characterization. Momentum is a tricky thing to design into a story -- you need just enough information to build curiosity, not so much as to bog down the pace.
TERRY ROSSIO: You can become your own hero!
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