Stephen Gaghan
Stephen Gaghan
Stephen Gaghanis an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award, as well as Syriana which he wrote and directed...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 May 1965
CityLouisville, KY
CountryUnited States of America
adapting families hopefully oil talking terror war
It tackles, hopefully in an interesting way, things that are going on right now. We're talking about oil and oil politics, about the war on terror and about how families are adapting
canvas certainly disposable easier east entire george last life piece point scene seems several simple turn west
I could have concentrated on George Clooney's character. I could have had him in every scene and told the entire story from his point of view. That certainly would have made my life a lot easier over the last several years. But the canvas was too large. These days, if you make a movie about East and West and turn it into a simple piece of disposable entertainment, that seems to me criminal.
love pages people substitute york
I love the op-ed pages of the 'L.A. Times,' the 'Washington Post' and the 'New York Times.' There's just no substitute for the people who are thinking and writing on those pages.
bob cia met seen together
I just wanted to get together with him. I wanted to see, what is a Bob Baer? I'd never met a CIA officer. I'd only seen them in movies.
views interesting people
Starting in 98 when I was researching Traffic, I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was kind of a great gift. And I really valued these guys; I stayed in touch with them, and I find their point-of-view quite interesting.
life-lesson character reflection
We are living in complex, difficult times and I wanted Syriana to reflect this complexity in a visceral way, to embrace it narratively. There are no good guys and no bad guys and there are no easy answers. The characters do not have traditional character arcs; the stories don't wrap up in neat little life lessons, the questions remain open. The hope was that by not wrapping everything up, the film will get under your skin in a different way and stay with you longer. This seemed like the most honest reflection of this post 9-11 world we all find ourselves in.
along business came devoured dollars dvd enormous suddenly watching
The movie business has been in enormous flux. It's always changing, and you've got to scramble. The Internet came along and devoured the DVD backend of the movie business. Suddenly you're watching dollars turn into nickels, and that's interesting to me.
great meet people quite serious starting stayed valued
Starting in '98 when I was researching 'Traffic,' I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was kind of a great gift. And I really valued these guys; I stayed in touch with them, and I find their point-of-view quite interesting.
life serves
Life serves up satire. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I don't know. You have to reel it in to drama.
best equal everybody fighting gets main possible time
At the beginning, everything's possible and everybody gets equal time, all the characters, all the ideas. You don't know who's going to be the main characters; they're all fighting it out. It's like kind of the best time in a way.
aspired class couple creative decided fail house life newspaper plays terrible took wrote
My father's father wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper and aspired to be a playwright. We had in our house a couple of crazy unproduced plays that he had written. For the one creative writing class I took in my life, I didn't do any writing - I decided that I would plagiarize his terrible play to not fail the class.
blocking detail highly last placement process separate speaking visual
I can't separate the process of writing from the visual process. I'm speaking only for myself here, but I'm a highly visual writer. In my imagination, when I'm thinking of a scene, I think of every last detail of it: The space, the color palette, the blocking of the actors, the placement of the camera.
except federal found good officials scene talking top
I remember, when I was writing 'Traffic,' talking to top federal drug-enforcement officials and having them say they read it and found it very good and believable, except the scene where the girl describes her resume.
bob guy seem wandering
What I really got from Bob was this unbelievable sadness. He really did know how the world worked, and he really did seem like a wandering guy without a country, like an exile. And it was sad.