Interviews

The Spec Script Library

Screenwriter : Matthew Giaquinto

Matthew Giaquinto
Upper Montclair, New Jersey
USA

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Why New Jersey?
I was raised there and I have not yet decided upon where to settle my life.
So there I stay, near family and friends.

What is your passion?
Movie making. I am a director at heart and have completed
several independent films.

What is your pride?
That look in my wife's eye when I've done something good.

What is your greatest fear?
Being a part of that monologue Francois Truffaut gives towards the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (who knew he could act?). It is when he talks about how many people around the world have the same desires as Dryfuss and Garr did, but where not lucky enough to make it all the way to Devil's Tower. If you understand that, you understand what scares me.

What does adversity do to you?
Thrive would be the cliched answer, but it usually wallops me up the side of my head. It is only until I shake it off that I am able to brush adversity away and stomp it.

What is your best quality?
An unstoppable drive to work for the betterment of the entire project,
not just what I have been assigned to do.

What is your worst quality?
I tend to wallow and spend to much time in detail.
My spelling and grammar.

What irksome habits do you have?
I smoke and work late evenings.

If you could have your time again, what would you do that is different?
I would start earlier in my life to become a film maker. The mind was willing, but the flesh was weak.

What would you like to change about yourself?
I'd quite smoking. About others?
I wouldn't make this business so closed door-ed.

How important is goal setting to you?
Extremely important. I have this goal to set more goals.

What goals do you have?
To be paid to either direct, write, or edit films for a living.

What is your ultimate goal?
Fulfill my dream as a can-can girl in a kick line or to be related to John Carpenter in terms of scary movies (at the height of his career).

What heroes do you have?
John Carpenter (he made the most successfully, truly independent film of all time). Saul Blanski (My next door neighbor- he gave up his dream to be a writer, to stay in a secure job and raise his family- way to go Saul).

What inspires you in others?
My unrelenting desire to see a project finished.

What inspires you in yourself?
My will ability to complete projects that many would deem too tough to finish.

What will be written on your headstone?
Born 1969 Died 2059

What does success mean to you?
An 18.7 mil opening weekend.

How do you measure success?
Success: Am I getting hired/work?

What are your pet hates?
Traffic, bad movies, ignorance.

What are your pet loves?
Football, drinking, eating good food.

What do you think of pets?
I love my cat.

When are you happiest?
When I have an idea for a script, but I can't get it out of my head quick enough. It fills me with so much energy I want to dance.

When are you hardest to please?
Watching my own films.

What has been your most embarrassing moment?
The way I acted after my first bad review.

What's the most exhilarating thing you have done?
Completed a feature length independent film that looks like a million bucks, but only cost me a thousand. Oh yeah, I was also nominated for an Emmy Award, that was pretty cool too.

What is it about screen writing that gets you fired?
Fired? I guess not doing my job. If fired means excited, I guess it's the screenplay is when a film is at it's purest state, before anybody else gets their teeth into it.

What screenplays have you written?
The Day I Met My Mother (filmed in 1995) The Good Book (filmed in 1996) Splatterpunk (1997), Morphik (1998)

What is your favorite pastime?
Watching The Dallas Cowboys win a football game.

What is your favorite motto?
I would rather try and shoot for the moon only to miss and fall amongst the stars than rather never to try at all.

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If you would like to contact Matthew
please mail him

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