Robert Greenblatt Quotes

Every so often, it's time to make a change with a showrunner. You evaluate the creative and how the show is run and how the writing staff works, and sometimes you want to freshen the show. We just decided that it was time to do that on Community, and no disrespect to anyone.

I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.

I believe that 99 percent of successful TV shows change an immense amount from the pilot to the tenth or twelfth episode.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

When you're a writer on a show, your job is to write in the show runner's voice, really.

Together with script writers Syd green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.

Netflix is looking for interesting ideas from interesting creators. They really want to help me make the show I want to make.

My role on 'Silicon Valley' was so small that I didn't have a lot of influence anyway in the show. There are four guys who really write that show and run that show and then six or eight hanging out in a room kicking in a few bits.

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

We originally developed 'The Client List' along with Lifetime as a TV movie - my manager and I became partners on the project. Then, we brought in Howard Braunstein on the project and produced it along with Lifetime.

Because I work in television, I always knew that I loved working with writers. It's very collaborative. You're always in a room full of writers.

The director in TV and the writer and the creator are working very much hand in hand.

I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.

I feel like my experience on 'Community' was that I saw just how important that first year is for a series. That is where you work all the pieces out, and that means honing the characters' voices, setting that tone, finding your angle.

No great television show has ever rested on just one person. They're all about great ensembles and storytelling.

Television is certainly a writers-led medium. They're the ones who are there, they're the ones that are conferencing or whatever, with directors coming and going.

One of the things that takes a bit of getting used to on an American series is having a different director, and often writer, every week.

The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.

The idea of being a show runner was very attractive to me, to create and control something.

I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.

TV writing is tricky to navigate because you have so many different personalities - the actors, multiple producers.

It's great, getting the scripts and working with somebody like Sam Esmail, who is such a great leader.

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.