Steven Zaillian

“I find that most of my scripts have a lot more scenes than most films, so the average movie might have 100 scenes, my average script has 300 scenes.”

“I have no problem with anyone being precise about small things.”

“People who would go to an arthouse cinema and watch a Swedish movie and read subtitles... it's a small percentage.”

“I'm not one of those people who writes long soliloquies.”

“The similarity between the big directors I've worked with is that they allow the writer to find a way of doing what they want done without saying 'do it this way.' They describe what they want, then letting the writer figure out a way to do it.”

“The main thing that I learned from editing is that most people, when they're making a film, they start too early into the story. They will try to set up the characters, they will try to establish things before the plot actually starts.”