Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'll be honest: I had a real deep-seated fear that 'Buffy' was going to be my peak. It was such a beautiful experience. It was such a fully realized show.
The reason I fell in love with Buffy was because of the ambiguity, because she was a superhero and a hot mess. I hadn't seen anything like her on TV - ever.
I think women can relate to the feeling that we're internalizing too many demands, and we're trying to be good at everything, but one day, we're going to snap.
One of the good things about consulting is that you leave the writers' room for a couple of days, things progress, you come back, and you might have a fresher take.
If there's a theme to where I'm at in my life, it's that 'warts and all' is actually my superpower. Just like you, I'm messed up and I'm capable. I'm this and that.
Too many people will die needlessly if we go back to letting people buy junk insurance or insurance that doesn't help people with diseases related to mental illness.
The dream of doing what I do started with watching movies by Mr. Spielberg, like 'Close Encounters,' 'Poltergeist,' and 'E.T.' That was the beginning of my obsession.
It all starts with a very solid, well-executed script, where the story is very clear and everybody is rowing in the same direction. That's always good; that's a constant.
On 'Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce,' we have a mandate to hire as many women as possible, but particularly on a show that is about women and about progressive issues like that.
Not proud. But I watched 'The Bachelor' only once, and I really felt, after that experience, that I could never do it again. I felt it was so morally compromising, as a woman.
I think many people expend a tremendous amount of energy on self-loathing and self-flagellation as well as getting caught in a vicious cycle of dieting and gaining the weight back.
Ever since I worked on 'Buffy', it's always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, 'Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It's gone to YA.'
Keanu has such generosity and intelligence, not to mention a warmth that I'm eager to tap into. We're all incredibly excited that he's agreed to help us bring 'To the Bone' to life.
I digested this value system that told me there was no one for me unless I reached a certain type of perfection. And as you get older, you realize that ideal is constantly changing.
There are certain shows or people that I would love to work with. One of the greatest things about our business is that if you get to fan out on people you might actually get to meet.
When every word is parsed for ill intention, regardless of who is speaking or why, we become so afraid we'll offend that we stop trying to communicate with people we don't understand.
I think there's a good-er divorce. I think that's absolutely possible. There's a better way to do it and everything in between, and then, of course, there's the disastrous way to do it.
When I was going to get ready to take 'Dietland' up, I have to say I was surprised to find that I felt like maybe we wouldn't find a home for it because it's unlike anything else that I've done.
It's funny: I've joked that 'Sharp Objects,' 'To the Bone,' and 'Dietland' are my self-harm trilogy, and each one is a different side of that triangle, with 'Dietland' really about fighting back.
It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.
I think the barrier for a lot of people to actual, real, lasting love is the fantasy. The problem is that we think in "happily ever after" love, but real love grows over time, and priorities change.
I've always had a flare for the dramatic. I thought about being an actor and I thought about directing, but writing truly became something I needed to do, just to stay sane. It's my over-pressure valve.
I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.
We did have 'The Bronze', a very active website on 'Buffy' where we got a lot of feedback and post-game discussion. But now it's important to be engaged in the discussion while the show is airing and right after.
I've been looking for a versatile and writer-driven home that could help me bring more complex, exciting, and potentially murderous characters to television - and the team at Skydance is the ideal partner for that.
In 'UnREAL', for me, just being so openly feminist, just being so overtly, like, 'This show is about women who are not necessarily likable, doing a job that is despicable, and we are not going to be afraid of that.'
That went on for a long time: telling various tales from my experience being anorexic and bulimic, and having people say, 'You've got to write this; you are a writer,' and me not knowing how to approach the material.
For me, the interesting thing about anorexia is that you show your wound. There's no hiding it. So my anger and sense of disappointment, all the stuff I was out of touch with, became this visible rebuke to my parents.
I love being in a public space where teenagers are talking. And the funny thing is that it hasn't changed that much. There's certainly slang that I'm not familiar with, but among the average teen, it's still the same.
Test audiences are notorious for getting kind of itchy when people talk too much, and you have to trust your instincts that they don't necessarily understand that you're not digesting the movie on a scene-by-scene basis.
It's so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them 'un-gay' again. Like, once you become gay, you've crossed over, or you're not allowed to be a person who doesn't want to be defined by a label like that.
To be able to actually sit in a theater and watch people get off on anything that I had a part in, is just thrilling. When you work in television, it's an isolating experience. You rarely ever get to watch it with an audience.
The great thing about the story of 'Twilight', or the story of 'I Am Number Four' is that you get to deal with real issues of identity and what people are going through and the choice of who you're going to be, but it's all large.
There's no shape or body type that makes you more happy or more lovable. It's the body you're comfortable in that makes you happier and more lovable. I look around and see how women and men of all types find the love and the life they want.
When you're allowed to tell stories with ambiguity and darkness and things that are still unresolved, that's the dream scenario as opposed to having to fit into a more procedural mode or something a little more conventional. That's not what's working on TV right now.
We're in the second golden age of television, and to me, one of the most profound things that's happening in TV is just that by default that opened the door to more women, more people of color, more outliers. It's one of the greatest side effects of the digital revolution.
Around 10, I got chubby. I knew I'd crossed a line when the only pants that fit were from the 'Junior Plenty' line at JC Penny. My parents had split up, my mom was going through a dark time, and my brother and I were getting bullied in our new neighborhood. Life was big and unsafe.
Seeing Donald Trump run for and then win the presidency only enhanced my commitment to helping people free themselves from ridiculous body standards and disordered eating so they can use their gifts for more fulfilling things, like being of service and enjoying this beautiful world.
'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger' not only applies to the deeply personal subject matter of 'To the Bone' but to simply getting a film about people with eating disorders made. Without the brilliant Julie Lynn, Bonnie Curtis, and Karina Miller producing, there's no way this project would be coming to fruition.
I think my biggest problem as a creative person trying to work within a business for profit was that it was very important to me that people liked me. Over the years, observing other showrunners who made work that I so admired, I realized that that had to go. This couldn't be my first priority. My first priority had to be the work.
I did, of course, do research about what the current state of affairs is in terms of the eating disorder community and who's being affected, and I was surprised to see that - something that was - way back when I was in the thick of it, it was typified as a fairly white, middle-class girl problem. And if it was, it really isn't anymore.