Max Joseph Quotes

I come out of an academic background, and I'm aware that what I'm doing is simultaneously research and fiction. I want to meet both those obligations.

I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965.

I think the sheer hell of trying to get a film made; I don't know if it would ultimately be worth it. The sort of format that I have, these TV things, sit somewhere between documentaries and reality shows and entertainment shows and dramas.

For a while I just couldn't imagine that there was a place for me in nonfiction. I looked around at what we were calling nonfiction and I thought, "Maybe you do have to go to poetry in order to do this other weird thing in nonfiction."

I've worked on a set before, know something about cameras, and done some editing.

You don't take a reality show and make it a movie. At least I wouldn't.

I think I do more fiction than autobiography.

I've learned more about directing from five years of television than I could have in ten years of film.

I do media work but I don't do broadcast on TV. I'm a content producer and creator, so I just go out there and produce awesome content.

I actually worked on the pilot of 'The Chase' and wrote the questions on it.

I really feel like there have been moments of some level of creative nonfiction. I have kind of had to explain or justify some of the timeline and logistics of my life in a way that made sense to others.

I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.

Whatever storytelling muscles you've developed as a documentary filmmaker will be extremely helpful as a narrative filmmaker.

I didn't understand that TV writing wasn't writing; it was pitching.

Television is where I'm most at home. I'm not one of those TV presenters who secretly yearns to be a Hollywood actress. Live telly is what I thrive on.

I started working as a movie writer and a movie producer... all the way back to 'Teen Wolf' and 'Commando.' All of those experiences, plus working both at DC and at Marvel - each of those things are bricks in the wall.

For someone like me, making a documentary - I don't kid myself. There's no influence at all. What I do is entertainment. I would even say much the same about the column I write in 'The Sunday Times.'

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.

I have hosted many shows in the past. Anchoring is something I really enjoy; hence, when I was offered to host the show 'Super Dancer,' I was excited to take it up.

I feel that a documentarian has an obligation to tell the truth as he or she interprets it. And what I mean by that is that documentarians don't necessarily have the same sort of obligations that a journalist might have. A journalist might be called upon to be objective, whereas a documentarian is sort of forced to take sides.

This Is Not a Novel memorializes the treasures and detritus of one man's singularly cultured mind. (...) If you don't know Writer's work at all, try This Is Not a Novel. There may be some doubt about exactly what kind of book it is, but not that it's altogether wonderful.

As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.

The myth of objectivity made nonfiction increasingly unread. In feature articles, we could be playful in the opening and clever in the end but in the middle it was back to the boring basics.

In terms of style, I think the memoirist should have a novelist's skill and all the elements of a novelist's toolbox. When I read a memoir, I want to really, deeply experience what the author experienced. I want to see the characters and hear the way they speak and understand how they think. And so in that way, writing a memoir feels similar to writing a novel.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.