But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn’t a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don’t have to be very smart.
BETH HENLEYBut here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
More Beth Henley Quotes
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I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I’d rather write plays.
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The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.
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It’s really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don’t get in trouble.
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I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
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I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.
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But here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
BETH HENLEY -
I’m very into the first production of the show.
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It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.
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I love writing for the screen.
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Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.
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That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
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Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.
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The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.
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I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
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Plays are so much more special if they’ve never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.
BETH HENLEY