James Cameron

And that's when you hit your stride in screenwriting.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I usually come up with way more ideas than I could conceivably pack into a movie.

And then I'll winnow that down.

I'll winnow that down to a big old fat screenplay that's unshootable.

And then I'll winnow that down.

And then I'll make a movie that's four hours long.

And then I'll winnow that down.

And then what you get is the end result is the distillation of the distillation of the best ideas.

And then that's what winds up in the lean little tight indie film that I like to call Fire and Ash.

It's only three hours and seven minutes long.

and then well it's good that you moved back though I did he told me I had that option he said I did that today actually for the first time I watched from the seat behind now normally that's my working seat when I'm reviewing because you can see that there's a desk there with an Abbott and so on but I thought

Well, let me see what it's like from there, where it doesn't fill my peripheral field.

And I've got a little bit more of that sense of control that you have when it's a proscenium.

And I thought, oh, this is actually pretty good.

Right, so we passed the most critical test.

Yeah.

I think you're on to something there in describing, as you're saying it, I'm thinking, well, what are my goals creatively?

I want to tell a great story with good characters that I care about, and I care about how they interact with each other and how their relationships evolve and how they resolve their own conflicts in a way that moves me.

Because if I can't move myself in a story, how do I expect to move an audience emotionally, right?