Jonathan Agnew Quotes

I think Bob Costas is terrific. He's so knowledgeable. He can talk about any subject, not just sports.

Humorists are using Twitter to tell jokes in an interesting way. It doesn't have to be profound, and it doesn't have to be earth-shaking, but it is transformative.

I always say the wrestlers provide the music and the announcers write the lyrics. You have to feel what you're seeing and experiencing to write the best lyrics.

When you call a game, it's almost like you're doing a three-hour movie and the production of it all, living in the moment in real time, the replays, all the intricacies that go into putting a game in a broadcast. It's not just 100 percent football.

Sideline reporting may look insidious, superfluous, or just a total waste of airtime from where you sit - probably on a couch or a recliner, perhaps on a bar stool in your local brewery - but let me assure you, if you're one of the handful who take it as seriously as some of my colleagues do, it is anything but.

There's broadcasters that make me enjoy what I'm seeing because of their energy and how they explain what's happening and paint that picture.

People are tuning in for one reason and one reason only: to find out what's happened. That's what took me a very long time at 'SportsCenter' to figure out.

Does Michael Cole deserve to take Jim Ross' place as a commentator?

It's kind of my intention to be myself on the show. My main priority on FOX is to do play-by-play. Nobody's tuning in to listen to me. If I didn't show up to do the games, people would watch, and the ratings probably wouldn't be all that different. That's not why people are watching.

For the really scary stuff to work at the end you have to fall in love a little bit with the family and want then to be ok. And once you get the audience to buy in on that then they care. They want them to be okay.

I love doing the readings. The readings are the fun bits... The readings are probably the things that actually keep me going on these. If I couldn't do the readings, I wouldn't do the [signing] tours. I get to stand up there and read to a bunch of adults who in many cases nobody's read to in years, since they were about five. They just squat on the floor. That's enormously enjoyable.

The films I like to watch are when they make it relatable to human audiences.

I like to service the full audience of America, so I try to do things that are just real artistic, like when they don't have the most money, but it's a great piece of work. Then, there are big, fun comedies and big animated movies for kids. I want to do things for my nieces and nephews. Ultimately, we're trying to deliver something entertaining to an audience. As long as it can entertain the audience, and it makes me or my niece and nephew laugh or cry, then I think it's good.

There are tons of stories out there. I read a lot of scripts on a weekly basis. I'm looking for stories to tell and stories that I hope will be interesting to an audience.

When we approached the project, the very first thing we did was take each character and say, "Okay, where would this character be?" We didn't want them to be caricatures of themselves. We wanted them to live and breathe, and grow with the audience and with us.

The greatest story commandment is: Make me care.

If the audience gets everything, if they see the photography and notice that it is good, then the story goes out the window, but if you become involved with the lives of the actors and forget that you are seeing mechanical devices on a huge screen - forget the make-believe - this is the job of the director to involve the audience with the actors.

To me, performing means trying to do the most you can with the partner in front of you, with the story you're telling. There are actors who have carried me, who have brought me elsewhere or with them.

When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there.

The God-honest truth is that Jeff and I just do what we do. You have no control. We didn't have control last year, or the year before either, or the year before that. We can only do what we do, which is to make the show that we love, continue to follow the path for the stories that we want to tell, tell great and compelling stories, week-to-week, that interest our fans, and really hope for the best.

To achieve the intimacy between performer and audience in storytelling, I feel like I have to let the audience in on my emotional state, not just, "Here's a story I'm going to tell by rote, and you're just going to listen to it, because I'm such a wonderfully entertaining fellow." It's the idea of sharing enough of myself that it's not just all about, "Look at me, look at me." There's an element to it of, "You understand what I'm talking about, right? You've been in this place that I've been in," which makes it a richer experience.

As a storyteller, you also don't want to make people feel like they're left out, like other people who have read the book have an interior knowledge of this show, and the degree of difficulty in watching it is much higher.

The level of control, that's part of what's so appealing about filmmaking - you have so much control over what the reader, the viewer, is noticing from moment to moment. They can't do that boring boring boring thing as easily.

The bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of drama is to be truthful. You can be truthful and funny, but if you're not truthful in a drama than the audience leaves you.

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.