Tony Gilroy, Writer/Director of Michael Clayton, on editing yourself.

There was a software program that I used for many years, WordPerfect, which is what I learned on and what I loved, but it didn’t paginate for you. So you had to pay attention to what was falling where, and it was very important to me to never have speeches break on pages. I would obsess, God, I need to get rid of one line to make this fit. And no matter how many times I’d pass through the script, I would always be able to find something to get rid of on any individual page. The fact that there was always something to get rid of on every page was a lesson. Every now and then I’d come to a page and go, There isn’t one thing that I can get rid of to buy a line, it’s so strong. I’ll stare at a page for fifteen minutes, Can I get rid of this? Can I get rid of that? I’ve been doing that for twenty-five years.