- Kaufman: What if a writter is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world...
- Mckee: The real world? The real fucking world? First of all, if you write a screenplay without a conflict or crisis, you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly:
Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day! There's genocide and war and corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love! People lose it, for Christ's sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the fuck are you taking up my precious two hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
- Adaptation, script by Charlie Kaufman.
