Steven Zaillian Quotes

Steven Zaillian — American Director born on January 30, 1953,

Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian is 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 List and 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... (wikipedia)

I have no problem with anyone being precise about small things.

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.

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.

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.

People who would go to an arthouse cinema and watch a Swedish movie and read subtitles... it's a small percentage.