Books are a little better movies than just screenplays because there's more fat on the bone. There's more character development. There's more stuff to pick from.
I never once had a regular paycheck. Not for more than six weeks in a row and for the most part not even that. I still haven't. The notion of some whistling kid with a mail cart coming down the hall and handing me my weekly paycheck is something I've only seen in Matthew Broderick movies.
