Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Instead of three networks you have three hundred or three thousand. Audiences are inundated with programming, and that sometimes gives them a sense of petulant entitlement.
I had a bumper sticker on my car for a long time that said, "Kill your television." People helpfully pointed out that I was a total fraud because I was a television writer.
When I wrote a gay character, I spent six months asking questions I've never asked a gay friend, the questions you don't ask just because you don't have the right to do it.
I've always been sort of entrepreneurial. ... I felt that I needed to learn how to write and produce so I could write my own thing and not worry about Hollywood finding me.
I wasn't a class clown, I just found at an early age that I was able to make people laugh. So I mostly wrote funny stuff instead of writing what I was supposed to be writing.
With kids you can take a chance but casting a guy at 45 is different. You don't discover somebody that age. If an actor hasn't made it by that time he probably has no talent.
I read an awful lot in college - a lot of Dickens, a lot of 19th century American stuff, a lot of old mysteries. Maybe it's helped me attain a certain fluidity with my style.
I think L.A. has got a great lifestyle, but I love New York. You couldn't do 'Broad City' in L.A. because L.A. is a much gentler place. The standard of living is so different.
It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.
The jokes I used to do on 'Sex and the City' were always comic character things, and they were rarely hard jokes. As soon as you go up in front of people, it demands laughter.
In the pressure cooker of a TV show, it’s a little bit of a witches’ brew. I completely think I’m capable of being crazy. I probably was crazy when I was doing 'The Simpsons'.
Younger people are younger a little longer these days, so we know a lot of 32-year-olds who are still quite young, haven't quite gotten their life paths completely decided yet.
And I told her point blank, you've got everything to live for. You've got such talent. You're back singing great, lose the weight. And she went and did it, and look at her now!
I'm meant to be an animation director. That world, and the culture of stop-motion, is where I want to live. It's more my problem than Hollywood's. I'm not attuned to Hollywood.
I don’t want to slam somebody else’s religion. I mean as a Catholic, we’re basically cannibals: We eat Jesus every Sunday, you know? So who am I to say your religion is creepy?
I have such a dancer's spirit that I tend to leap around the house. Once I leaped onto my bed and landed on the floor. But I danced more for myself than I did for other people.
The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.
Morals always sound like cliches, but usually cliches are based on things that are ultimate truths. Be grateful for what you have; appreciate what's right there in front of you.
With acting, I've always gotten by in life acting in situations. I'm a small person. I didn't have a chance to be a bully. But I could always act myself out of tough situations.
I think one of the reasons for the success of 'Breaking Bad,' and now for 'Better Call Saul,' is that we have been blessed by AMC and Sony with enough time to figure things out.
I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens.
You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.
Here's what happens - you create something in the moment that you feel will be good, and then... people's reactions to it or people referencing it years later, it's a compliment.
People wince when something is in bad taste. They laugh when it's funny. If it's too dirty or wrong, they won't laugh. But if it's a big, dirty, smart, funny laugh, they love it.
The only art form that Americans have created that's recognized around the world is jazz music born in a community that had the peculiar experience of being unfree in a free land.
The first show I worked on was 'In Living Color.' I think 'The Daily Show' was the culmination of having that point of view - being able to look at this third rail in our society.
There are no minor decisions in movie making. Each decision will either contribute to a good piece of work or bring the whole movie crashing down around my head many months later.
I've never done it, but I think if you do a Google search for 'People who will help me travel across the country to meet my online love,' I'm probably the only person that comes up.
Cable's on fire. Traditional broadcast TV's hearing a death knell. I sample as much television as possible. I like 'Homeland,' 'Game of Thrones,' 'Veep.' Now reinvention's important.
I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.
Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate. Without them, what would shape our lives? Perhaps, if we never veered off course, we wouldn't fall in love or have babies or be who we are.
How do you find a better actor than Michael McKean? How do you find someone who's just that good? They don't grow on trees. Plus, he's a pleasure to work with, pleasure to be around.
It's always better if you can keep the bar low, and then exceed the expectation. When it's high, that makes the job even tougher. But, I think we're up for the challenge. We're ready.
There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you've got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That's why you get rhetoric.
One final thing a director needs: The ability to say 'I am wrong' or 'I was wrong.' Not as easy as it sounds. But in many situations, these 3 words, honestly spoken, will save the day.
We need more filmmakers of color telling the story. I'd like to see more filmmakers take their products out independently, put together a good commercial film and distribute it online.
In all animation, if it's done quickly, you'll know it. And if you're very slow and careful with it, it's going to look a little more beautiful. It's just compressing time into seconds.
I think stop-motion has always been semi-obsolete. And stop-motion animators - people like myself - love it so much that we're always going to be looking for new ways to make our films.
I think I've actually been saying from the beginning, I think Paulie [Calafiore] has a good shot. That's the only one I'll say right now and on the girls' end, I'd say Michelle [Meyers].
To be emotionally resilient and to overcome your circumstances, not through fighting, but through being courageous and having endurance was something I thought was of primary importance.
If I wanted to be famous, I could have been famous before. I mean, I produced a Frank Sinatra special - Elizabeth Taylor, with Michael Jackson, Gregory Peck, I won't even take a picture.
Advertising is the art of the tiny. You have to tell a complete a story and deliver a complete message in a very encapsulated form. It disciplines you to cut away extraneous information.
I know many of the critics and I don't think of them as God-like figures. What can they do to hurt me? Sure, I might be slightly embarrassed for a day, but then you just go your own way.
It's amazing, the quality of good work that happened in the fifties when a series would have to turn out 30-some episodes a season - it's amazing that 'I Love Lucy' was as good as it was!
A person could look at me through ninety-five per cent of my experience and know that I had no shot. Because I was so unreliable. The only thing you could rely on me for was to betray you.
I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person.
I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.
The sort of lifetime achievement stuff that I'm getting now is kind of like Tom Sawyer's funeral because they all know I'm sick. I am getting buildings named after me and awards and stuff.
I think it's so incredibly special to be able to try to recapitulate that feeling I had when I was sitting in that theater, as a 7-year-old. It's an extraordinary job. I'm incredibly lucky.
With 'Nostromo', Joseph Conrad said that he had wanted to write a novel about the degradation of an idea. That's what we wanted to show in the case of Dustin Hoffman's character, Bernstein.