Robert Ben Garant Quotes

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

The trick is always to write in pairs because if at least two people find it funny, you've immediately halved the odds of it not being funny.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

When we are in pre-production, this is the best job in the world. Working 10 to 7, sitting around and brainstorming with the other writers, making things funnier and writing and rewriting scenes - that's as fun as it gets.

I think film and television - particularly film - you are very isolated as a writer. If you're lucky, you have a good relationship with the director. Then you do make that development and come on set and be part of something. But ultimately, your work is kind of done by the time you come on set.

I think writing in a group, even though it can be a challenge - you have to be on your toes all the time - is the way the best comedy gets written. It's very, very collaborative. A lot of comedy writers are definitely introverted nerds.

You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done.

I've hung out in the writer's room a few times, but the fact is we've got such a good writing staff, I don't want to get my peanut butter fingerprints on anything.

When you're a screenwriter working on a film, you're not really even welcome on set, even if you know... When I wrote 'Elizabeth' and Shekhar Kapur was a friend of mine, but I wasn't really welcome on set, because the director is God and it's a very difficult position for a screenwriter who's put so much passion into that, into the writing.

When you decide you want to become a television writer, you naively assume it's going to be like the writers on the old 'Dick Van Dyke Show.' You'll write something and they'll just put it on TV. But what you quickly discover is that American network television is television by committee.

Because I work in television, I always knew that I loved working with writers. It's very collaborative. You're always in a room full of writers.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.

Screenwriting is a much more collaborative effort. When you write a novel, it's just you, with input from your editor.

I share an office with Jason Sudeikis, and I'm friends with him, so I end up writing for him a lot.

In ten episodes, we were able to do our writers' room first. We did that all summer and wrote for 15 weeks and got everything in really good shape.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

Together with script writers Syd green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.

All the sudden, I was part of the 'No Man's Land' thing, and there was a bundle of core writers for that, but somewhere along the line, I became the go-to guy after that initial arc.

I would never want my name on something that I did not write most of. Part of television is you get rewritten.

When people slave over those scripts and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, they don't usually want you to add farts.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'

With writing, I prefer the solo effort, but when a team is working right, as it did on 'The Grifters,' boy, it's exhilarating.

I find that with every script I get, I go, 'Who knew this? This is so cool!'

There were guys in 'The State' who would take one script and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and fight for it for a whole season, and after a couple of seasons, you realized that doesn't work. You have to just be willing to throw something away, no matter how good it is, and write a better joke.