Michael Spiller Quotes

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

Usually when you're doing a season one, you're trying to find the show.

The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story's going to end and how it's going to go. But on television nobody knows what's going to happen, even the writers.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

TV has gotten perhaps better than your average film script, but at the same time, it's fun to give it all you've got for a few months and produce a story.

I'll always love movies. But there's something I love very much about TV, when you shoot episodes while other episodes are still being written.

I am currently talking to one of the studios about making American Star as a TV series.

In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.

Nowadays, kids know how a programme like Merlin is made and how it works. But the show just seems to grow in popularity the more it goes on.

Developing a series is a next step for me.

At our best, it's a good experience but we do 22 episodes a year, so there are some clunkers.

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

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

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.

I'm very focused on 'Dexter' right now. I want to make it as good of a show as we can.

I feel 'Breaking Bad' - maybe everybody says this about their show - I feel like this show is so special that I don't 'know' that I necessarily really know what it's like to do a regular show.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.

In TV, you're always confused because you legitimately don't know what you're doing the next week.

I love writing plays because they are living, fluid things that are energised by the producer, designers, musicians, actors and audience.

Now that I know what goes into making a pilot, keeping it on the air, and keeping your fans, I'm at a point now where I do a pilot and just hope for the best. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

My approach to 'Star Trek' was, 'I know science fiction, and I know screen writing.' That was very arrogant of me, but you really need to be a little bit arrogant to think that what you have to say is good enough to justify the expense of hundreds of thousands - now millions of dollars - to make an episode of the TV show.

I like to do a movie, to be on it 8, 10 weeks. It evolves as you're working on it. Little things come to you every day. It's a slow process, and when you have to pack it into a short period of time, which you do for television, the experience is not one that I cherish. So if it's going to be television, it's really got to be the right thing.

Mini-series are my favorite medium to act in because it's the right amount of pages you shoot a day, it's the right amount of time that you're with a character, and they really advertise it a lot so that people get excited for this epic event.