Adam F. Goldberg Quotes

The fact 'Twin Peaks' had a life at all took most of us in the cast by surprise. We thought it would be too unusual for network television. The original intention was that it would be a two-hour movie. If the network didn't want to pick it up as a series, it could just show that. But ABC took a chance.

The network shows tend to be run, in general, in my experience, by committee, and it's hard for actors and writers to do their jobs.

Yeah, I'd done a bunch of pilots. Some that had gone for a while. One that went for 13 episodes. But I had never been on a show that had lasted more than that.

When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.

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.

I've always had a show that went seven episodes or 13 episodes or whatever. And I've never had a show that's gone past a first season. It really is a lot of work.

It's just hard for a multi-camera show: Either they hit big, or they don't.

It's always interesting for me to watch the pilot of an established show because you see how the writers and actors weren't really sure what the show was and what the dynamics were. If you look at the pilot for 'Seinfeld,' for example, it's practically unrecognizable.

It's pretty surreal to be doing a show on HBO with pals.

I did a network show in the U.S. before, and I loved it, but you have eight days to shoot an episode, and it's just a ridiculous pace.

So, I can live with people saying, "I didn't like it." But I can't live with people saying, "There just seems to be no plan here," 'cause there is a plan. And a lot of people fall into that, where they don't know what their show is yet. Their pilot gets picked up, and they have to figure it out. I would hate to be in that situation.

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.

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

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.'

On 'Game of Thrones,' I remember shooting in Croatia, and by lunchtime we'd see photos of what we'd shot online and think, 'My God - people really care.'

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.

I just wrapped a new show for Amazon called 'Transparent.'

It's not about creating 22 episodes indefinitely for as long as you can do.

It was somewhere in doing the last season of 'Leverage' that John Rogers and I became confident that we had developed an all-new production technique where we could put more on the screen with very little money. So we started to get more comfortable with the idea of trying to tackle 'The Librarians.'

I think one of the reasons for the success of 'Breaking Bad,' and now for 'Better Call Saul,' is that we have been blessed by AMC and Sony with enough time to figure things out.

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

Sitcoms are more like stage drama than anything else on film - more than a one-hour and certainly more than a movie. You get a script on Monday. You rehearse all week. And on Friday, you're on.

Alexis and I actually shot the very first scene of 'Gilmore Girls.' What I thought was fast was nowhere near what has become known as 'Gilmore pace.'

I'm going to go do a Netflix series. It's straight-to-series, 10 episodes, probably go for three seasons. I'm going to direct the pilot and hopefully the last episode of the first season. The show is 'Seven Seconds.'

With a first season, you never really know how viewers or the network are going to react to a show.