I've twice written films straight after I thought up the idea, and they were both disastrous. In 1989 I thought of an idea for a film about dreams, complete, at a petrol station on the A40. I drove home and started writing frantically. Six weeks later it was finished. Six weeks and one day later it was in the dustbin. I reread it, and I realised it was well-constructed twaddle, it meant absolutely nothing to me. On the other occasion, I wrote a film for America, to please Americans, which I made up on the way to a "pitch-meeting." Two whole years of writing later, I attended another meeting at MGM-- they told me they absolutely loved the film, provided I could change the character of the leading man, the second lead, the cameos, the dialogue and the jokes. I said that only left the title. They said they wanted to change the title too.
--Richard Curtis (1956-), writer of "Four Weddings and a Funeral", in introduction to the screenplay
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