Channing Dungey Quotes

My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life.

The anthology format is completely normal to me. That's just how TV works in my experience.

I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don' t watch it now. I don' t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!

Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

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

Most women's pictures are as boring and as formulaic as men's pictures. In place of a car chase or a battle scene, what you get is an extreme closeup of a woman breaking down.

The pilot is a sales tool; it introduces you to the characters and might set the template for what the show is meant to be, but there's so many boxes you have to check off on a pilot that it can sort of hurt the storytelling in a way.

I'll tell you what I miss most. What I would love to do, more than anything, is just anthologies. With an anthology you can tell any story and be in every division of television. We don't have any anthologies anymore, do we?

The trouble with Hollywood films is that they always have a pleasant ending.

When I was a kid I never knew the difference between a sitcom and a drama. I just knew what my parents were watching and what was making them happy.

If you start with a good idea, you can encapsulate it in a phrase and explain it. I like high-concept films. Everyone can get hold of it. I don't think there's any harm in that at all.

I've seen 'Babel' four times. And each time I realize anew what a monumental project that had been for me.

If you look closely at 'Breaking Bad' and any given episode of 'The X Files,' you will realise the structure is exactly the same.

What's so cool about movies is once you're done with the movie, you put it away and come up with a whole new different idea with different characters and a different world. But in TV, you build these characters, and you build this world, and then you're there for however long you do the show.

There is a kind of structure for a story that was peculiarly compelling for the radio. I thought I had invented it atom-by-atom sitting in an editing booth in Washington on M Street when I was in my 20s. Then I found out that it is one of the oldest forms of telling a story - it was the structure of a sermon.

I feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time.

I think 'Trial & Retribution' as a brand can go on forever. Its joy is that it has, to an extent, a formula, which gives a comfort routine for viewers. But we allow our directors total autarchy in putting their personalities on their stories.

TV is a different animal these days. You can bring together really smart writing and directing, in-depth character development and really meaty political and emotional stories.

The 13-episode model lends itself to a more serialised format, which is nice and gives writers a chance to breathe some space into it.

You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula.

Most action is based on redemption and revenge, and that's a formula. Moby Dick was formula. It's how you get to the conclusion that makes it interesting.

My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.

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.

A lot of writers dream of feature films, but television - by way of TNT, CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark Hall of Fame - has always called my name. And after seeing 'True Detective,' can there be any doubt that the storytelling on TV is as genius as it gets?