Daily Inspiration Quote by Terence Fisher

Fisher is giving away an unfashionable truth for a film director: cinema may be visual, but it runs on sentences. Calling the written word "the basic of everything" isn’t a romantic ode to literature; it’s a practical creed from someone who worked inside tight schedules, tight budgets, and genres (notably British horror) that live or die on clarity, rhythm, and setup-payoff mechanics. In that world, an idea is the engine, dialogue the steering, and everything else is just production value trying to look like inevitability.

The hierarchy matters. "Most important, the idea, and after that, the dialogue" is Fisher quietly pushing back against the auteur myth that the director can rescue anything in the edit or through visual bravura. He’s insisting that story is infrastructure. If the idea is weak, no amount of atmosphere will keep the audience from feeling the wobble.

Then comes the sharpest bit: the confession about rehashing dialogue "as you go along". He admits it happens, even while labeling it "disgraceful" - a moral word, not merely a professional one. The subtext is respect: for the script as a plan, for actors who need stable intentions, for the audience’s sense that what they’re hearing was meant. But Fisher isn’t naïve. "Now and again you have no choice" acknowledges the messy reality of filmmaking: scenes don’t play, censorship notes arrive, locations fail, performances reveal new angles. The line lands because it balances discipline with triage. Writing is the foundation; rewriting is sometimes the emergency repair that keeps the house standing.