David Denman Quotes

I've heard that George Clooney did something like nine pilots before 'ER' was picked up, way back when he was doing TV. It's just the way the business works. There are a lot of pilots that we've never seen. It's protocol.

From an actor's point of view, you never really like to hope that anything will go beyond the pilot. I'd always say to my agent every time I filmed a pilot, 'Great! Well, I'll see you at pilot season.'

When you're making a pilot, what you're mostly thinking is, 'Please let this be a real job, please.'

I've been on one TV series after another. None of the network decisions have ever made sense to me.

The pilot system in television is utterly broken. It's a huge waste of money.

As actors, if you get a pilot on HBO or on USA, your odds are good that it's going to get picked up.

Pilot season isn't perfect, and it certainly is a very difficult time. But pilot season does work for us.

I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn't sell.

Like, to do a pilot, you don't know what's going to happen with it.

There is a 90% failure rate for most shows. It's difficult for any show to write for the next season.

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.

Pilot season is always crazy because you audition for a million things, and really, in the end, it's not up to you.

Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot.

Networks can typically invest tens of millions of dollars in the development of a pilot. And if they put the show on the air and it fails, that's all lost money. There's no monetization of a broken series.

The first season of a show is kind of like an extended pilot. You're only really on the map if it goes a second season.

It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life.

I had developed a sitcom with UPN, but it wasn't picked up.

I was 16 when I auditioned for the series '8 Simple Rules.' They cast the kids first.

When I first began doing TV pilots, my expectations were high. I didn't understand that world. So when 'Weeds' took off, I was so happy. Especially as I was just a guest star in the pilot. But once it got picked up, they made me a regular cast member.

There was so long from when we did the pilot and then when the show was eventually picked up by Comedy Central - and, in fact, we had to shoot the pilot twice.

Before 'New Girl,' I had just been grinding in TV for a really long time. I had been testing for so many shows and not getting them. You don't know how difficult it is or how lucky you have to be - and I only say lucky because there are so many people out there - to get a show on the air and keep it going.

That's the hard part of television: When you walk into the network tests, you're signing away seven years of your life.

I've had nine failed pilots. I've been doing TV for a long time.

The most important decision you can make as a showrunner when you're doing a pilot is who's in it and who's directing it.

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