Steven Zaillian
Steven Zaillian
Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillianis an American screenwriter, director, film editor, producer, and founder of Film Rites, a film production company. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay Schindler's Listand he has been nominated for Awakenings, Gangs of New York and Moneyball. He was also presented with the Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the 2009 Austin Film Festival and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America in 2011...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth30 January 1953
CountryUnited States of America
I have a few things that I have written over the years that haven't been made, but I sort of feel like there was a good reason why they were not made. So I am not anxious to go back and fix them. I don't have something in the desk drawer that I think, "The time is right now. If I just do this, it'll be great." It is kind of out of sight and out of mind. I am thinking ahead rather than back.
When I am writing I don't set a certain number of pages. I do know that the further into a script I get the faster it goes. As soon as you start making decisions you start cutting off all of the other possibilities of things that could happen. So with every decision that you make you are removing a whole bunch of other possibilities of where that story can go or what that character can do. So when I get maybe 2/3's of the way through I can see very clearly where it is going to go.
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.
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.
You do a draft and you get more notes. You start to get the feeling that this either isn't going to happen or it is going to take a really long time to happen, and I never felt that with this [the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo].
I'm not one of those people who writes long soliloquies.
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.
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.