I think Cool Hand Luke was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy re…

- Brian Helgeland

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…

- Brian Helgeland

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyo…

- Brian Helgeland

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 whatev…

- Brian Helgeland

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,…

- Brian Helgeland

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…

- Brian Helgeland

In my own experience, the scripts that I wrote, if they didn't go within two years and become a film, they never went and no one ever came looking fo…

- Brian Helgeland

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 mad…

- Brian Helgeland

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

- Brian Helgeland