Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Part of what you try and do when you're writing is to just transcend politics and the moment in a way and talk about something, those fundamental building blocks of building nature.
Holding women to the idea of 'write what you know' subtly reinforces the status quo. Writing is a chance to celebrate who we are. But it's also a chance to celebrate who we could be.
When I first began writing, it was not in screenwriting but in poetry. That form was so evocative, all about the image and the emotion captured in a Polaroid-like smattering of words.
I think that sense of wonderment, where you walk out expecting the ordinary and are confronted by the extraordinary, is something that has always interested me, whether in TV or comic books.
Westworld is an examination of human nature: the best parts of human nature... but also, violence, sexual violence have sadly been a fact of human history since the beginning of human history.
The reality is that 'Westworld' is designed so that guests can indulge with impunity their every fantasy - be it light or dark. So the hosts experience the extremes in human behavior, good and bad.
I had a lot of college debt. It's very difficult to go to a university that is as expensive as Stanford and then blindly follow your passions when they don't immediately make money out of the gate.
There are very few video games where there are - like, completely pacifistic - and if there are, I tend to play them - 'Dance Dance Revolution,' there was a game called 'Flower' that I really enjoy.
How many of us have these demons or habits or things we don't like about ourselves and understand the loops that we're in and yet are unable to break out of them and create lasting change within ourselves?
Being a lawyer, it's like holding a key card to a parallel dimension of rule sets in the world, and it's lovely to make sure that key continues to work and to continue to brush up on the law every so often.
I didn't need a harassment scandal to break out in Hollywood or misogynistic people in government to know they exist. Anybody who's a woman, a minority, or a thinking, perceiving male can see that it exists.
When I used to watch Westerns, I could admire the craft, but I never really loved them; they never spoke to me. Maybe because I'm first-generation American, I'm a woman, and I just didn't see myself reflected.
The great thing about fiction is you can talk about things without being didactic about them, but hopefully forge a connection with people and an understanding about a shared humanity that tells its own story.
One of the many delights that I found in directing was that you plan so many things so meticulously so that they go smoothly. But you also have to leave time and space for spontaneous emotional moments to arise.
Working on 'Westworld' has been an incredible experience in learning to make something with the scope of a feature on a TV timeline with a budget nowhere near what you would expect for a feature film equivalent.
Nobody ever has a problem if a man writes a woman. I wanted to be able to say, 'Well, I can write your men and your action, too. You don't just have to give me the love scenes, which I don't even think are my strong suit.'
I think it's a very powerful notion, the notion that our personal views, although closely held, are not necessarily right. That part of what is noble is making sure there are checks and balances and a plurality of opinions.
Another writer might question whether you're feeling competitive. But if I talk to Jonah, I know that he truly values my success more than his own. And I truly value his success more than my own. There's a generosity there.
Growing up, I would take out books from the school library and hide them in the hamper. I'd wait until my parents fell asleep, and then I'd sneak into the bathroom, turn on the light, and dig out the books and read all night.
I've been looking for a superhero I could tune into and relate to for years, and when nobody stepped in to take the place of 'Buffy' in my poor soul, I thought, 'Maybe I can create somebody!' That's how 'Headache' came to be.
You have to be very specific with the suggestions of how you want to show things, not just with dialogue but also place and mood. I write all of that as very vivid guidelines so directors can come in and do what they will with them.
But in a TV series, you can really take a novelistic approach and explore characters that you wouldn't ordinarily see, in a level of complexity that you wouldn't ordinarily get to explore just out of the sheer time constraints in a feature.
Since time immemorial we've explored these ideas of tragedy, the things people do for love, the great weight that occurs when love is taken away and the great length and the heroism that people will exhibit to fight for the ones that they love.
I've always been fascinated by memory and I remember Jonah, when we first started dating, was working on something involving memory. It was early on in our relationship and I was like, damn it, I wanted to do a movie on memory. That was 'Memento.'
In 'Lost,' they really believed in the mystery box and not looking too much inside the mystery box. It was some kind of idea generator that you didn't need to dissect and open up. And that's absolutely fascinating and an engaging way to tell a story.
What does the future of 'Westworld' look like? I don't necessarily think that we've seen the last of these artificial worlds that are central to the concept of our series as a whole. But the major lens that we will have is going to be the real world.
You know, both my parents aren't really from this country, and the emphasis was really on education and studying, and TV seemed like it was not the best use of my time for my parents. So ironically, of course, I rebelled completely and now it's how I make a living.
For me, when I started writing, it was mostly poetry. And poetry is very visual. I feel the same way about the way that I approach direction. There might be a theme within the visuals that you're choosing that people don't consciously pick up on, but that they feel.
When we were thinking of 'Westworld' and doing it with HBO, what they really showed us is that they have the ambition in their network, and they value production value as much as we did, and that that would be a perfect place to do a show of this scope and this ambition.
Our civilizations have evolved. The solutions we can find for the things that keep us somewhat primitive and base and ugly in our desires can improve and become more sophisticated. Sometimes there's a disconnect between that. My car can drive, but we can't get rid of violence.
The most damaging part of pervasive bias, whether it's implicit or complicit because sometimes it can be well-intentioned, is when that bias gets internalized and women start self-centering and stop thinking that they're incapable of achieving what they want and achieve empowerment.
And I think the greatest danger that AI poses isn't so much these anthropomorphic beings who look like us and are beguiling are going to fool us. It's the fact that a intelligence without a body or corporeal form will fool us into trusting it with data, which we seem to think is... it has no repercussions.
What's so bad about Google knowing I need Kleenex? Look at it in the aggregate - see how information... can be used to target people based on their profiles and change the course of human history, as I believe it is already beginning to do. This knowledge that I need Kleenex has bigger complications than just needing Kleenex.
