BRIAN HELGELAND / SCREENWRITER

Brian Helgeland hates being called an overnight success. The 36-year-old Massachusetts native moved to Hollywood 13 years ago, paying his screenwriting dues with such horror flicks as “976-EVIL.” But he’s hot now, having scripted “Conspiracy Theory” (starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts), “L.A. Confidential” (from a James Ellroy novel) and the rewrite for Kevin Costner’s “The Postman.”

NO WHINING: “I hate the whole writers-as-victims thing--writers complaining that their original vision was destroyed by the studio. That certainly exists to some degree, but there are a lot of bad writers around. When you hear of a project with 15 writers, it’s not like they had 15 Hemingways and just chewed through them.”

UNCONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: “You hate to hear things like, ‘The scene is great but too long. Can you cut a half a page?’ It’s like when Mozart is told his music has ‘too many notes’ in ‘Amadeus.’ ”

HOT PROJECT: “There’s a book at Warner Bros. that everyone’s excited about called ‘The Perfect Storm,’ a very character-based action story by Sebastian Junger. It’s nonfiction about a failed rescue at sea.”

MUSICAL INSPIRATION: “I like Fiona Apple and Heather Nova and Paula Cole’s first album--good for when I’m writing female characters. I’ve actually gotten a lot of good dialogue for women out of song lyrics by women, sometimes ripping them off directly, sometimes just the feeling.”

NAME-DROPPING: “This is definitely a city where you can be best friends by association. If you know someone who was friends with someone who knows Nick Nolte, it’s just as good as being best friends with him yourself.”

CLASSIC: “All the knowledge of Western civilization is contained in ‘Cool Hand Luke.’ ”

THE GROUND FLOOR: “Horror movies are looked down upon wrongly by many writers, but it’s a really great way to break in. In some ways those stories are really suited for film and you can get away with a lot of mistakes if it’s good enough. And with ‘Scream’ and ‘The Relic’ and ‘Species,’ I think that style is coming back.”

MANDATORY SERVICE: “In school they have the ‘semester at sea’ kind of thing. They should have a mandatory semester in life for everybody in show business so they can go live in the real world for six months and maybe have more interesting stories to tell.”