Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Human beings are psychologically far more afraid of bugs than they are of driving a car, whereas people get killed by cars every single day, and there is hardly ever a story of people getting killed by bugs.
On the other hand, we worked a year on this and some people are going to watch it in a night and go, "We want more!" And there is something I miss about the longing and the anticipation for the next episode.
When you're doing a film called 'Interstellar,' at some point - the idea was to be grounded in the science as much as possible - but with a name like 'Interstellar,' you had better go somewhere big and bold.
I noticed that 'Lost' had sort of worn out our welcome; because of 'Lost,' audiences were no longer being patient with slow reveals: they wanted answers quickly, and they wanted story to develop much faster.
You may wonder: how do I overcome the common 'Cute/Insane Conundrum,' as it occurs in men ... Yes, it's a fact - any man who seems cute, fabulous, and incredible to you will, of course, turn out to be insane.
This business [moviemaking] isn't easy. It's a hard business. You just keep plugging away until you figure it out. You write something you love and keep banging on people's heads until somebody lets you do it.
Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.
I wrote a spec script that people really liked: a political serial based on Jeffrey's Toobin's 'A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.' It was the first thing I had ever written with any political subject matter in it.
I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale.
Religion and gods and beliefs - for me, it all comes down to your brother. And your brother might be the brother in your family, or it might be the guy next to you in the foxhole - it's about human connections.
The creative process requires a period of boredom, of being stuck. That's actually a very uncomfortable period that a lot of people mistake for writer's block, but it's actually just part one of a long process.
I'm a luddite in comparison with some of the people I follow on Twitter, but a nerd in comparison with many people. But I was always a nerd in other terms - always a big Dungeons & Dragons fan, stuff like that.
I knew I wanted to be a writer. Where I came from, no one was a writer. I came from Long Island, and everyone became a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or a teacher or a businessman. I didn't know any writers.
In some ways, a novel isn't as structurally rigorous as a screenplay or a TV show, which have finite real estate. In a novel, you can more deeply illuminate a character's interior and get away with digressions.
You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It's brighter than the fire ... blinding. That's why you pull away from it ... Love is pain ... Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature.
Mainly, I'm doing my thing, and I hope people like it. I don't say, 'I'm going to write something radical and hope it reverberates throughout society.' The goal is to write a solid, entertaining, engaging show.
Doc Savage, Indiana Jones, Flash Gordon... these were the kinds of characters I was thinking about as I was developing Jonas Quantum because there aren't that many brand new characters being introduced anymore.
There are some actors who come alive in front of a crowd, and if you've cast it right, there's an energy between cast and audience that can be exhilarating for both parties, then enjoyed by the audience at home.
The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
That's a discovery process. That's the terrifying and wonderful part about getting picked up to series. You get to develop the stories and talk about the characters, and find out where the heart of the series is.
One thing I had learned in college was that if you ever had a question about truth, reality, or the meaning of existence, read a novel by Albert Camus. Pretty soon you'll be so baffled you'll forget the question.
'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' ends with the spaceship lands and Richard Dreyfuss' character best on, but a bunch of pilots and sailors from the 1940s get off. You kind of wanted to know what happened next.
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.
When you're surrounded by friends and exes, there's a whole lot of stuff that starts crawling out. But however serious and traumatic those experiences may be to the participant, to the onlooker they're hilarious.
Think you've seen it all? Think again. Outside those doors, we might see anything. We could find new worlds, terrifying monsters, impossible things. And if you come with me... nothing will ever be the same again!
I absolutely love television, and I don't mean to be vulgar, but as I keep having to explain to people from the movie industry, I get more power and more money doing television, so why on earth would I do a film?
Is our desire for partnership just an evolutionary remainder, a Togetherness Delusion, where millions of women only think they need a relationship to be truly happy? Maybe. But you know what? That's fine with me.
I'm never going to look like a Nordic model, so I play with what I've got. Instead of going gray, I dye my hair bright colors; I have bad vision, so I wear sparkly glasses. I embrace that I look like a crazy lady.
I eternally fight internal battles about developing things that only appeal to the East Coast and the West Coast. For years I've been trying to do a Western, nobody's interested in doing a Western, how can that be?
I'm mostly coming at the superhero legends as an outsider, I know them and I studied them but I didn't really grow up with them, but I think it allows me to sort of analyze them in a way that's kind of interesting.
When I first started writing, I had a very difficult time switching between projects, but now it's not only second-nature, it's indispensable: If I stall on one project, I can switch to another and stay productive.
Middle Age connotes fat, cancer, bad musical taste, and death. It conjures up a commuter in the sixties going to a Neil Simon play in Sansabelt pants, a knit vest, balding, belly sagging - and then there's the men.
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.
I think of masculine and feminine energy like two sides to a battery. Theres a plus side and a minus side, and in order to make something turn on, you need to have opposites touching. Its the same in relationships.
I'm not very good in the mornings and often stay up late writing, so I get up at about 10am if I'm not on set for the day. I take our dog, Milo, for a walk before having a light breakfast and settling down to write.
Also, this is our lives for a huge part of the year and we did not want to be in prison, 24/7. It was too oppressive. So, we were like, "How can we get out? Let's see their lives, a little bit." That was really fun.
'Be nice' is my family's basic rule but one that often goes unfollowed in Hollywood. There's always a moment when you can choose between being snarky and being kind. I opt for the latter - it's much less exhausting!
Youth, then, once ballyhooed as the epicenter of fun, hot dogs, hot sex, and marvelous dope-smoking good times, is now defined as follows: that period before death, characterized by smooth skin and ill-formed ideas.
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.'
You've gotta have a path [in your life]. And then, within that path, you have to be flexible. When things aren't working, you've gotta cut bait and find something else, but if you don't have a path, you're just dead.
I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.
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.
I think of masculine and feminine energy like two sides to a battery. There's a plus side and a minus side, and in order to make something turn on, you need to have opposites touching. It's the same in relationships.
We hold in our hands, the most precious gift of all: Freedom. The freedom to express our art. Our love. The freedom to be who we want to be. We are not going to give that freedom away and no one shall take it from us!
The primary reason people watch television is you want to see the world through somebody else's eyes, and learn what that's like. You can only live one life, and so you get to see other lives through these characters.
TV and film are very different media with different requirements. In a TV show, you have actors and fellow writers and directors, who are interpreting your work. With a novel, you only have ink, words and your reader.
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.
The Doctor: Oh, now what's this, then? I love this. A big, flashy-lighty thing. That's what brought me here. Big, flashy-lighty things have got me written all over them. Not actually, but give me time... and a crayon.
With directing, you have to wake up early, which stinks, but you get to hang out with the crew, you're laughing, you're active, and you're working with the actors. It's just more fun than writing. Writing is very hard.