As much as I love period movies and especially more swashbuckling movies, I think that sometimes they tend to be, umm… it’s hard for the audience to relate to them.
For me in a film, almost every scene you end up cutting a bit of the start of it out, and some of the end of it out because there’s always…once you’ve rehearsed it and shot it, it feels like a couple of times and you can always get out sooner.
Because I’ve been at it so long and very steadily, I have a lot of credits, but I probably have twice as many scripts that were never made for whatever reason.
If you write an original, its like you went in and dug a well, and you hit oil. But an adaptation, its like the oil wells on fire, and they bring you in to put the fire out and get it working again – or something like that.
It’s always once the script’s done in the first two years if it doesn’t get going somehow or another, I’ve never had an old script that someone’s made later on.
I think there’s something strange about writing a script I’ve written many, many scripts – dozens and dozens of scripts – and every time I start one, I think to myself: ‘why in the world do I think I know how to do this?’
