Michael Arndt

“In live-action, writing, production, and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors, and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely.”

“A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.”

“The best writing really does come from the deepest, most private part of you.”

“My God, there are so many mediocre screenplays out there.”

“If you write a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different opinions, you end up with these long scenes of everyone standing around talking.”

“In terms of writing characters or stories, at least initially, there's no difference between live-action and animation. A good story is a good story, whatever the medium.”

“I can write two scripts concurrently, but I usually prefer to do one at a time. However, I also usually have 5 or 6 story ideas that are percolating in my head at any one time, so it can get a little crowded in there.”

“You never want your second act or the whole movie to just be this relentless march towards its goal. You want things to take the audience by surprise.”

“One of my favorite films is 'Late Spring' by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.”

“Writing a great script - not just a good one, but a great one - is almost an impossible task.”

“Working at Pixar has been like my graduate school for screenwriting.”

“The great thing about the animation process is that is goes from, I write the lines, it goes to the actors, the actors bring a whole world to that, they bring the characters to life, then it goes to the animators, then it goes to the editor who cuts it together, and then you screen it and it goes back through the system again.”

“Good writing is deceptive in that it hides its own artifice - it makes it seem easy.”

“I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn't seem to be any other way to start writing a script.”