Stephen Gaghan

Life serves up satire. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I don't know. You have to reel it in to drama.

— Stephen Gaghan

More attention and thought goes into naming a character in 'Call Of Duty' than all the work that can go into certain…

— Stephen Gaghan

I came to Hollywood originally writing comedy and writing satire.

— Stephen Gaghan

We are living in complex, difficult times and I wanted Syriana to reflect this complexity in a visceral way, to embrace it…

— Stephen Gaghan

It's rare in Hollywood to get the chance to work on something that you actually care about. The tragedy of the place…

— Stephen Gaghan

When I was seven and told my mom, 'I'm gonna be a writer,' she said, 'Oh, that's a terrible idea. You'll live…

— Stephen Gaghan

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…

— Stephen Gaghan

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…

— Stephen Gaghan

It's tricky to ask a filmmaker to explain his own work; usually we're the least qualified to make sense of what we've…

— Stephen Gaghan

I think the War on Terror has succeeded in creating more terror, more terrorists, a less safe America, and a less safe…

— Stephen Gaghan

The average development time for a Hollywood movie is nine years. Nine years for a studio film. And a lot of what…

— Stephen Gaghan

Starting in '98 when I was researching 'Traffic,' I got to meet really serious people in Washington, which for a screenwriter was…

— Stephen Gaghan

War and, apparently, hurricanes are very good for the oil business. But I've got to believe at a certain point, as a…

— Stephen Gaghan

My father's father wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper and aspired to be a playwright. We had in our house a couple of…

— Stephen Gaghan

I know Charlie Kaufman really well, for instance. Charlie Kaufman starts a story, and he has no freaking idea where he's going.…

— Stephen Gaghan

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…

— Stephen Gaghan

The movie business has been in enormous flux. It's always changing, and you've got to scramble. The Internet came along and devoured…

— Stephen Gaghan

I remember, when I was writing 'Traffic,' talking to top federal drug-enforcement officials and having them say they read it and found…

— Stephen Gaghan

When I moved to Los Angeles, I wrote spec screenplays. I was really poor, and I thought I was just gonna do…

— Stephen Gaghan

As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like…

— Stephen Gaghan