What can I tell you about the screenwriting process as I know it? Just maybe that you’re alone in this. Take your inspiration where you find it. I don’t even know what that means. Inspiration? What the hell is inspiration, anyway? You just sit there and wait. That’s all I do. I sit and wait. I don’t even know for what. For it to get better? What is it? You tell me? You write an introduction and send it to me. Maybe you know. Maybe you can tell me something. Why does it always have to go in this direction, writer to reader? Maybe you have the one thought that’ll change everything for me. The one thing I haven’t considered in my relentless, obsessive, circular thought process. Is there that one thing? Is it possible for one person to impart any transformative notion to another person? Is that what I’m supposed to offer to you in this introduction? Something to start you off on the road to a successful screenwriting career? Awfully presumptuous of me to think I might have that capability. Awfully naïve of you to expect it. Look, the truth is everything is a mess as far as I can tell. It’s just a messy, junky world. People are mean. People are lonely. People are lost. Nobody knows a damn thing. Some people pretend they do. Don’t trust them. Some people pretend they like you. Don’t believe them. And if you’re going to write a screenplay, try to keep it around a hundred and ten pages.

Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich script introduction (via synecdoche

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