Charlie Brooker Quotes

One thing about writing 'The Sarah Silverman Program' was the concern that I don't give myself the best story, you know what I mean?

Mike and I figured out a lot about the world, characters and story in the initial two weeks between creating 'Avatar' and pitching it to Nickelodeon.

I'm not sitting around thinking of ideas for TV shows.

The strangest thing about writing a sitcom, is never knowing if it will become anything but words on a page.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.

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.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

I've never had to pitch a movie to a studio. I usually just let people read the script, then I cast it. I always think pitching is for baseball.

One of the reasons I started working at 'South Park,' actually, was that I wanted to learn how to structure things and how to tell a story.

I do think the first time you read a script, that gut response is very important, and that probably plants a seed that continues to blossom throughout the whole experience.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.

Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one.

I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.

When we are in pre-production, this is the best job in the world. Working 10 to 7, sitting around and brainstorming with the other writers, making things funnier and writing and rewriting scenes - that's as fun as it gets.

In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for 'True Detective' was one of them.

Most of the things I've had a producorial involvement on began as things I was going to direct, or I set out to direct myself and realized either I don't have the fire in my belly to do it, or I don't feel like I've licked the story enough.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director's work.

The first is that instead of writing a sequel, which is what most people do, this is in fact a prequel. Although we didn't know that when we began the process.

I've sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they've never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive.

People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies.

I've been guilty of being in the writers' room and going too dark; other people have gone too wacky and zany.

Everyone talks about the gags, but the most difficult thing is coming up with the stories. You have to learn to do that for sitcoms.

A producer friend of mine from film school had read some of my early screenplays - some experiments I had done to see how fast I could write something.

For me, writing is a part of directing. It's the first stage of directing.