Palpable Quotes

This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around "How To" ... Screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Towne`s script (Chinatown) is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

In New York there isn`t that weird palpable competitive thing where it`s friendly but everyone isn`t trying to top one another with jokes when you`re just hanging around.

You can`t get a place more conflicted than Cambodia. You come up with ideas as you go. Film ideas come into your head. Sometimes you write them down. Sometimes they just pass you by. This one goes back to `93 when I went to Phnom Penh. It was an extended vacation and I knew very little of Cambodia. What I knew of it was The Killing Fields. What really opened my eyes and surprised me was how beautiful the country was. Phnom Penh was this partially destroyed city but a lot of it had been preserved. The royal palace is there and all the pagodas along the Mekong River. It was a real contrast from say, Bangkok. There was also this palpable sense of danger. There were a number of ex-pats I met too and these people were as interesting as the places. Guys that had opened bars and felt like they couldn`t go back. About a year later I read an article in the Tribune that Cambodia was being used as a fugitive haven. It sort of presented itself to me as an opportunity to do something really interesting. - On what inspired Dillon to base City of Ghosts in Cambodia.

You`re not even allowed to show a bloody nipple. It`s pathetic. What Bond needs is a good, palpable killing sequence and a good sex scene - and it doesn`t have to be graphic, you can use your imagination. We had a good one in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) - a really classy, sexy scene.

There`s an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture... It`s palpable.