Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are no characters in the limited series Fargo that are derived from the characters in the film Fargo. It's hard to describe how remarkably true to the film the show is.
My first instinct was Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) cannot be president of the United States. She needs to lose because it's the thing she wants most on the planet Earth.
That's the definition of a mini-series. A mini-series is a show that has no continuing story or narrative elements between one group of episodes and another, so no, I wasn't surprised.
Two things happen when you're fearful. First, you make seemingly rational decisions that are actually hedges. Or second, you fail to do something because you worry about the consequences.
I think maybe the most important thing that I or anybody at my company and any of my colleagues can do is establish a trusting, productive, collaborative relationship with creative people.
You can't be in a certain business and not sell to Amazon or not sell to Wal-Mart. You have to reckon with them, because even though there are other buyers, they're the only buyers that matter.
I think a shotgun or a handgun that has a six-round clip is a very good, perfectly adequate weapon for self-defense, in the home. You simply can't create that kind of mayhem, if you have to reload.
I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting. Even some of our best shows have had substantial re-shoots and reworking before they've gone on the air.
Veep is my priority. Veep is my home, but I have nothing but obviously, good thoughts and really want Curb to be Curb. So anything I can do, as long as Veep is not getting hurt, I guess is the answer.
I am certainly vulnerable when I sit down with parents who have lost their children to gun violence. The emotion that they experience is so foreign to me that I find it very hard to say the right things.
Here's one of the great things, and I may have said this somewhere, so forgive me. Curb ideas are not Veep ideas. I definitely have my Curb idea list that I've been carrying around for the last five years.
Television shows are not like cars or operating systems, and they are not best made by engineers or coders in the same assembly line manner as consumer products which need to be of uniform size, shape, and quality.
Even good shows can fail to find an audience because they're drowned out by the noise and the sheer volume of everything that is being made. It's one of the downsides of there being, as I've argued, too many shows.
When a young person is not eating three meals a day but still getting perfect grades at school, or when a young person deals with trauma at a young age yet still makes it to college, these are the things that inspire me.
I have been able to watch the Clintons and The Clinton Foundation; Al Gore and what he did post-losing the whole Florida thing. There's a grand tradition of a lot of interesting stuff that happens to these post-presidents.
There's a grand tradition of a lot of interesting stuff that happens to these post-presidents. Especially in this day and age where you leave office in your 50s and you can live another 40 years, easily. That's a lot of time.
That is what we have been feinting towards for a year of our lives: pretending like it was going to happen, acting like it was going to happen, and making you think it was going to happen. I like to work from the back forward.
We want to make the best television possible. We should be drawing on the entire available pool of storytellers and directors, and we should be expanding that pool and trying to hire the very, very, very best people. That's our job.
You look at who's actually created shows for FX that have succeeded, and there are a lot of first-time showrunners - Ryan Murphy, Denis Leary, Louis C.K., the 'It's Always Sunny' creators, Kurt Sutter, Joe Weisberg, Pamela Adlon, Donald Glover.
Reality television was in some ways being unimaginative at that time. We were excited about the possibilities of the form, to use real people as your stars, to not be about winning, to be about going on complicated, challenging, funny, dramatic journeys.
If you think about how broadcast mini-series approach historical events, there is a hagiography. There has been a soft, very glossy idea about history. And one of the things I like about Game of Thrones, for example, is just the grit and the authenticity.
I believe that it is my job to fight for the rights of others to have the same rights that I take for granted. As a white, American male, I have had it quite good. I recognize that and fight every day for everyone to have the same opportunities that I have had.
I do think that's one of the strengths of the show is every year there's sort of the giant rock gets thrown into the stream and Selina has to figure out how to get around the rock. It's in Veep's DNA, whether anyone realized it or not, to constantly be changing.
I saw [Ronald] Reagan. I've watched Jimmy Carter and his selflessness, getting involved in things like votes in African countries, but also putting his foot right into the whole Israel-Palestine crisis. Sometimes into places where people are going, "Why are you doing that?" .
I think that's part of being a comedy writer. You have to be confident. If you're sitting around worrying about, like, oh my God, what are people going to think, then you're not writing comedy. You have to write what makes you laugh, and then the world hopefully laughs as well.
I think it would be bad for storytellers in general if one company was able to seize a 40-50-60% share in storytelling. I don't think monopoly market shares are good for society, and I think they'd be particularly bad for society and storytellers if they were achieved in the storytelling genre.
As much as I very much want audiences to watch FX's carefully curated and highly contextualized television shows, I'm now glad when anyone takes the time to watch even our competition's television series, as long as it demands their sustained attention and challenges their knee-jerk perceptions.
I think it's a fun thing, and perhaps maybe very so slightly as an American, it's a slightly different thing that they didn't do as much of when the show was 100 percent written by Brits just because I'm not sure they were quite as familiar with some of these little moments in our government system.
For me, personally, I'm more comfortable with what I would call third-person entertainment, meaning watching a character that's explicitly not me and experiencing something through a character's eyes, than what I would call first-person entertainment, which is a video game in which I am the character.
Perhaps storytellers don't need to care as much about the future as executives and investors do. After all, isn't it possible that technology will enable storytellers to connect directly to their audience without the need for anyone to share the programming decisions or the profit in between? Don't bet on it.
We also have a piece about the Mayflower, but it's just a very different, very gritty, very character-driven version of why those people were on that boat and what the experience was like for them, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and also the Native Americans and what the state of Native American society was at that time.
I'm an Amazon Prime member. I subscribe to Netflix and Hulu, and they have great user interfaces and some excellent original programs. But what truly distinguishes all three of these services is the utility of their vast libraries of acquired content, which also is a part of what makes each a platform, even if it has a 'house brand,' too.
One of the cool things, obviously there's 'Scandal,' 'House of Cards,' there was 'West Wing.' Other than that Jack Lemmon/James Garner movie about ex-presidents, no one's ever done anything in this area, whereas a lot of times, we do a story where someone goes, "Oh, yeah, they did someone sleeping with a Secret Service agent on 'House of Cards.'"
I think the fact that they all served under her as a president is a strong pull. Here's a perfect example: George Stephanopoulos. He has a full on career in the media of his own, and yet on some days he's still George Stephanopoulos who worked for the Clintons. As much as he's done on his own, he's still in the Clinton orbit and it comes back up all the time.
Not ever having been an agent myself, my sense is that upper-level agents who have the most power, who can move people through the system more easily, are less willing to take on the volume of work to break somebody new. And then lower-level people, if they are willing to take on somebody new, they don't necessarily have as much sway, and it's harder for them to push somebody through.
My grandmother taught me two very important lessons before she passed: hold the door for everyone and always say "thank you." That means to treat everyone the same, no matter if it is the President or a homeless mother begging for food. And never forget to thank those who have helped you, whether it is the person serving you food at a restaurant or your third-grade teacher who taught you the multiplication tables.
Well, equity matters. I hope that most of us believe that we actually would all benefit from living in a more equitable society. If that's not happening, we're squandering human potential. We want to make the best television possible. We should be drawing on the entire available pool of storytellers and directors, and we should be expanding that pool and trying to hire the very, very, very best people. That's our job.
It is amazing that 2001: A Space Odyssey has not aged at all, except for a few minor technical gadgets. The main reason is, of course, the philosophical or spiritual element in this story. We know as little today about the secrets of Creation and evolution as we knew before, and it is not likely that we'll ever know much more. We'll have to be satisfied, as Kubrick was, respectfully admiring the potential for evolution within the mystery of the universe's creation.
There is a privilege in American society to being male and being white, and I think it's hard for white males to understand that privilege, because we've never experienced the opposite. When I sought out mentors to try to move forward, there were white males in virtually every position from which I was seeking mentorship. There was a natural simpatico or natural comfort. And so if you believe that's true, and I believe it's true, then we have to change that. We have to try to equalize opportunity and privilege.