Marc Guggenheim Quotes

There's a crazy, false notion that audiences are not patient or will not watch a story, that you have to put in a scare every ten minutes. But I always thought that was insane.

You can do things with TV that you just can't do on film. There's so much more time: there's the opportunity for development, and you can let things lay dormant for a period. You can't really do that in two hours or three hours in a movie that often, I would say.

You never know, especially on episodic television, you just don't know week to week what's going to happen.

It's not that I don't enjoy a good mystery that comes and goes in a hour. I do, but God, 'Breaking Bad' and 'Saul' unfold like novels.

In film and theater, you know the story and the journey from beginning to end, but with TV, you can keep peeling away layers and exploring a new world each week.

I used to watch 'EastEnders' till the plots got ridiculous.

I really like scripted dramas. My favorite show of all time would have to be 'Lost': I loved how the writers and producers were able to weave the different storylines together; and the acting in that show was incredible.

But then of course you reach a point where you have to say, I've got to figure out how this book's going to end. Otherwise, you're going to write yourself into so many dead-ends.

I think the context of an hour-long drama gives breathing space that you don't get in a film.

What I took away from my 'Flashforward' experience is that when you're doing a serialized mythology show, you put your foot on the gas, and you do not take it off.

In episodic TV you have to keep things secret to keep the viewer in suspense.

TV has a three storyline structure, but 'The Killing' takes on that structure with such ambition.

There's this thing in TV that I find hysterical where the writers and creators will ask us if you want to know what happens to your character or if you want to experience it episode by episode. In the theatre, we always know the ending; we always know where the character is going.

The nice thing about a series is you can end on cliffhangers all the time. You can be like, 'You know what? Here we go, this person just died, end of book.' And with the end of the series, you're very conscious of all the plotlines that were left hanging. There's a balance there to wrap those up but still leave it exciting.

I'm very much about stories that are fast but character development that moves slow.

In fiction, it's a big challenge to keep the reader in one place for so long.

The difference between movies and TV is that in TV you have to have a trauma every week, but that event may not be the biggest event in the characters' lives.

One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.

'Psych' was so many different things, and they evolved in so many different ways over the years, and towards the end there, we were barely solving mysteries anymore. We were just paying homage to our favorite movies, television shows, and bringing through as many '80s icons as we possibly could.

Personally, I think it would have been really nice, if 'Lost' had just one season.

Funnily enough, 'Chuck' prepared me for '24.'

In television, the cuts are so quick: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! I want to shoot two people and sit there for eight minutes and watch them. I've got a lot to learn about television and about the best ways to tell stories directorially in that medium.

The danger of writing a so-called thriller is that in your last 100 pages, all of these really interesting characters you've created are just running away from something or toward something, but they're no longer capable of innovation or discovery.

A lot of shows, things will just simmer and simmer and maybe never explode into the open, or only risk exploding into the open when it's clear that the series has gotten to its endgame. So I'm always impressed - but not surprised - when 'Scandal' just completely goes for it.

Film acting is so different from theatre acting, and TV is about letting things pay off and not winning every scene.