Richard Lester Quotes

On a television show, you basically make a movie a week. Movies take three months - it's crazy. They're so slow, it's like vacation to me.

When movie people go over into television, it's a little bit of a shock. It's much faster-paced. Everything is really last-minute. You won't know your schedule for the next episode until the last minute.

Television is fast and loose. You have two or three takes to get your part right, and if you have a problem, well, by the time you figure it out, everyone's moved on to the next scene. It's good training, keeps you on your toes.

I think I'm better wired for television. I love variety as far as a project. I'm easily bored and the schedule of a television show, it just keeps you going.

I think the rigors of a TV schedule are brutal and 'Six Feet Under' wasn't a network schedule. We did 13 shows, we didn't do 22. I don't know how people do that. I really don't. I mean the shows are shorter, but wow, it's quite a discipline.

Well, I'm directing a lot of television these days.

You do show after show after show and get them done and on the air. Television devours material. We work a minimum of 12, 14 hours, and often 15, 18 hours a day.

There's times when I'll see a show, or something cooking on TV, and think, 'That can really be fun when it's working.' But it's a grind. I did that at NBC, it was five days a week. I was doing 'Talk Soup' and 'Later' at the same time. It's a hard job, more difficult than people realize.

Directing television is really hard - it's so fast. You shoot an hour show in seven days.

Acting in TV as opposed to films is really difficult. What a film gets two months to do, we get eight days to do.

Network shows shoot so fast, so you kind of have to just go with your instinct.

Every year in consulting is like three years in the corporate world because you have multiple clients, multiple issues - you grow so much.

I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.

As I slowly managed to take what I had learned into a transition from contestant to announcer and warm-up, I first had to prove myself on pilots. And as you know, many pilots are taped for each show that is lucky enough to breakthrough to being a series.

Looking back now on our workload, I just shake my head at our pace. 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' was my first series, so I didn't know anything about that when I started. I just assumed it was normal to make 26 episodes a year on a seven-day shooting schedule.

In features, we're languid: we shoot one or two scenes over, like, three days. In TV, the pace is so different. You're shooting ten scenes a day, going way into the future or way back into the past. It's complete madness, and I'm just trying to keep up with this really electric pace.

On a soap opera, you'll do an episode and a half a day, and in prime time television, you're hustling to get an episode done in eight days. That's a little bit frustrating sometimes. But there's also something exhilarating about it. It's kind of like live theater in a way, where you get one crack at it.

A lot of times in television, it's incredibly rushed, and you're just trying to get the pace.

When I started in the business, you did television, and then when you got lucky, you got a prestige project of a film.

I'd been acting since I was a teenager. I'd come to the point where I was writing my own movies of the week for TV. That was fun.

Sure, I came up under Mike White, and Miguel Arteta; I was Mike White's assistant on 'Dawson's Creek.'

Originally, I was an assistant director. For many people in that role, becoming a director is the ultimate goal. But, in my case, that wasn't my goal at all. I just had fun doing it. The schedule was hard, but I enjoyed it greatly so I just kept at it.

I spent most of my time as an actor in television, so directors in television - it's such a machine that's already in place that I don't think you notice the direction as much on the set.

If my career isn't moving ahead I may consider TV.

I believe I can do both the 'Bloodborne DLC' and 'Dark Souls 3.' This isn't the first time I've had to work on two projects at the same time.