Jude Law and Nicole Kidman star in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain.

On the Auteur Theory.

I try to remember that even if finally a film is authored by one person--and I believe it is--the conundrum is that it's achieved by many, many hundreds of people. It's as if they're all holding onto your pen as you're writing. And if they don't hang on--if they don't support the pen--you can't make your piece of work. So I've never allowed myself the delusion that I was doing it by myself. I am extremely grateful to the crew, and I let them know I am.

On control.

Given that I've written the scene, scouted the location, worked with the design--that there's very little that I haven't had enormous control over--I've learned that the job finally becomes one of witnessing, not controlling. If I've got Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger in a scene, and they've rehearsed with me and are saying the lines that I wrote and doing the actions that I require of them, then beyond that, I don' t need to exercise power over them. In fact, quite the reverse: I need to learn from them and be instructed by them about the moment that they're in as actors.

Language is an Action.

One of the most important things for an aspiring screenwriter to think about is that beautiful lines are not the business of screenwriters. Language is an action; it's part of the vocabulary available to an actor and often a small part of the vocabulary available. To carry too much of the meaning of the scene in the line is a very big mistake. Often a moment of failure or a moment of contorted language, of ugly language, can be more eloquent and communicate more to an audience than the most beautiful epigram.

Moviemaking as Growing

I think of the whole process of moviemaking as growing, where everything is growing all the time: you grow from a blank page to an answer print, you grow the sound along the way and you learn about what sort of sound the film likes--what sort of layers of sound the film is intrigued by. Also, how sound works in transition. I love the pre-lapping and post-lapping of sound. I love scenes that finish deep into the preceding scene and scenes that begin deep into the preceding one.

The truth About Moviemaking.

In the end (and this is the truth of moviemaking, as far as I'm concerned), no effect, no gesture of the camera, no lighting characteristic, no design or costume flourish has any weight in comparison to a moment of performance. If you can get the truth of a moment from an actor, with a video camera, with them standing against the wall, that's worth more than any dollar that you can spend on anything else.  

The pen precedes the process.

I think that the pen precedes through the whole process. The instrument of the writing changes but it's still a writing process. You're writing with a notebook, you're writing on the computer, you're writing with the camera.