Chris Carter Quotes

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan, I'm a 'Wire' fan, I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump.

I would love to be in a Jimmy McGovern drama on TV, but there is no way he would ever ask me unless it would be to play a lawyer or something.

We need more drama on Australian TV. We've actually dropped the ball on that.

Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick really changed the way one-hour television looked and the depth of how deep it could cut emotionally.

If I write a cop show, it's not up to me to decide how different it is from 'Law & Order.' I had screenwriters go on and on and on about how their cop show isn't like any other cop show on TV. They made very good points, and it absolutely doesn't matter. It's entirely up to the audience to decide.

The quality of TV drama nowadays is getting better and better. They've had to invent a new term for it: 'high-end television.'

I have to tell you, TV is an incredibly difficult medium. The most challenging show to do is the hour long dramedy. It's a very tricky format.

I think that 'Lost' is a bit of a dinosaur in terms of the type of show it is. The economics just don't support making a show this big and complicated profitable enough for a network.

You can't really compare any TV show to a show written by Aaron Sorkin.

'The Wire' was a combination of great TV and great theater.

With drama, especially, it seems like the bigger the budgets and the edgier the characters, the more interesting they are. We're very lucky because 'Modern Family' wouldn't fit on cable: they'd want us to push it more and be edgier and turn it into something that it's not.

I think sometimes actors are drawn to good television because you have more time to sell it, you have more time to shape a character, and to tell a story, and that's really appealing.

I would really like to do a really cool one-hour show, maybe on, like, HBO or something like that; or something that I've spent a couple of years developing so it would be exactly the character and exactly in with a huge push behind it; or I would maybe want to do a sitcom; something light and funny.

There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'

At the same time, television theatre became more visibly active.

Sometimes I want to do something that's really funny and other times I read an indie script that is going to be made for nothing but I want to do it because I think that I can connect with something in the story.

My goal is for 'The Bill Engvall Show' to be a show the networks look at and say, 'Ooh, maybe we should get back to the family sitcom.'

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then.

'The Names' is planned as a nine-part series. I have a kind of road map: I know the final scene of episode nine. But as to exactly how we get there, what detours or horrible accidents we might have to pass through, I like to keep that a little fluid.

The highest-caliber dramatic work produced for TV - not just in cable but something like 'The Good Wife' at network - is consistently great.

TV's been good to me.

As for 'Twin Peaks,' I'm happy to have been a part of something that was a success. The only time I was concerned was during the second season when it started to lose its focus, and I was thinking, 'What if I get stuck here for five years? I would go crazy.'

All Shondaland shows have a level of intelligence, a level of humor, a level of pathos and human connection.

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.