Screenwriting

I moved into directing for a couple of reasons. ... Most directors, I discovered, need to be convinced that the screenplay they’re going to direct has something to do with them. And this is a tricky thing if you write screenplays where women have parts that are equal to or greater than the male part. And I thought, 'Why am I out there looking for directors?'—because you look at a list of directors, it’s all boys. It certainly was when I started as a screenwriter. So I thought, 'I’m just gonna become a director and that’ll make it easier.'

This...is why screenwriting pays so well. They don't pay me to write. I'd write for free. They pay me NOT to punch people in the neck.

Well, Jack Warner may have been celebrated for calling writers "Schmucks with Underwoods," but 20 years earlier Irving Thalberg … said, "The most important person in the motion picture process is the writer, and we must do everything in our power to prevent them from ever realizing it."