“Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director, and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.”

— Ben Hecht

from Let's Make the Hero a MacArthur
Books

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Ben Hecht 32

American screenwriter 1894–1964

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“They filmed it down in Wexford and I visited the set for about half an hour. I don't usually go near the set, because there's nothing for a writer to do there and you're constantly getting in the way. If I give a book to the movies, it's theirs. Writers often whinge about being betrayed by the movies – I have no sympathy for that. If you don't want a movie to be made, then don't sell your book to the movies.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Who cares whodunnit? (2013)

“It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Perils of Being Pauline" http://wrt102summer2005.blogspot.com/2005/07/pauline-kael-new-yorker-interview.html, interview with Francis Davis, The New Yorker (October 2001).
Interviews

“There are directors that make one good movie their whole life, but this movie creates a buzz around the director, then they get like forever good reviews. Till someone 20 years later says, look, to be honest I liked only the one movie of that guy. In my case it’s exactly the opposite. I get trashed for whatever I do. They don’t see any difference in what I’m doing.”

Uwe Boll (1965) German restaurateur and former filmmaker

2000s

“Kubrick wasn’t making a movie when I was working with him. He was preparing to make a movie, which is something quite different. Part of the charm of working with a director like Kubrick, if there is or was a director like him, was that during the privileged period before he even showed (the script) to the studio, it was just between him and me. You are sort of creating a game in the ball court of theory. There is no film being shot; there is no budget. It was in many ways a very exciting time. It’s also very fraught, particularly for a writer, because you don’t know if it’s going to be of any point.”

Frederic Raphael (1931) British writer

Of Eyes Wide Shut
Interview, http://www.tipjar.com/dan/raphael.htm

“The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type – as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer – an insipid one or a clumsy one – but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years – as producers did – who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.”

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) American screenwriter

from "Elegy for Wonderland", by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959

“You can't get a big head about [fame]. When people stare at me, they could be whispering to their friend, 'That guy sucks! Have you seen him before? He's horrible.”

David Spade (1964) American stand-up comedian

Hollywood Minute, Saturday Night Live

“His problem is, he gets an idea in his head and he can’t get it out if it’s wrong, no matter what evidence you hit him with.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 55 (p. 405)

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Ch. 2, section V http://books.google.com/books?id=xXxWIS_KF5gC&q=%22When+Fortuna+spins+you+downward+go+out+to+a+movie+and+get+more+out+of+life%22&pg=PA48#v=onepage
Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous)

“When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2001/12/14/vanilla/index.html of Vanilla Sky (2001)

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