Ron Howard Quotes

Sitcoms are what got me excited about show business.

I love sentences. I love characters. But most of all, perhaps, I love to work on plot, and that may be where my natural gifts lie, if I have any. I like to think hard about plots in TV shows and films.

I wasn't necessarily looking to do comedy on TV, but I don't think it's an accident that I ended up on 'Community.'

I think if you look back at all those great comedies on television in the past, it's all lovable losers that gathered together - 'Taxi' and 'Cheers,' 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends.'

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

On any serialized show, you're going to have through-lines that take you through the season, and you're going to have individual arcs that resolve themselves in shorter order.

I think multicamera comedy is a much-maligned American art form.

I especially love 'Web Therapy' and I did 'Eastbound and Down' too. I had a lot of fun doing that.

If you look closely at 'Breaking Bad' and any given episode of 'The X Files,' you will realise the structure is exactly the same.

If you take 'Cheers' and 'Seinfeld' and watch the early shows, they're kind of awkward. It took a while for the writers and everything to gel.

When I was on 'The Golden Girls,' we'd have eight scenes per show. And when 'Seinfeld' came along, they went to, like, 30 scenes a show, which was revolutionary. 'Arrested Development' has probably got 60 scenes per show. It just keeps emerging as this more and more complex thing. I always try to keep it very simple at its heart.

In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.

I'm really into 'Veep.' I think that the showrunner Armando Iannucci is a genius.

It's often the death of the show when you break the tension and the two lead characters get together.

All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and started looking at what was available - I obviously couldn't play Gloria; I couldn't play Claire. When I saw the character of Cam, I was like, 'I have to have a shot at this,' because I thought it was a character that would be really fun to play.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

I think the sitcom is the format for television. It's the essential form, and it represents more of the canon of TV, which is why I latched onto it.

I think audiences can feel when they're being served a filler episode.

I watch the comedy shows like 'Married With Children,' 'Friends,' 'Family Guy,' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond.'

I've been cast in a lot of comedies. I've done things like multi-cam sitcoms: you know, 'Seinfeld' type... not as good as 'Seinfeld,' but that kind of thing. I love that stuff.

I think a season of 'Atlanta' bounces back between classic sitcom structure and genre movies.

Conflict is the place where character and plot intersect.

The story [for the western genre] is everything. Whether it's a book or a screenplay, the story drives everything. And if you just go out and try to make one by putting on boots and jumping on a horse and riding off... If you don't have the material, the characters and the things to overcome and conflicts that give life to drama, you don't have it.

Because I come from the theater, I use the images of the theater and of movies a great deal when I write. I see the story in my head. I have to break down the outline of a story first. I have to know where I'm going. Usually I have a good beginning and a good ending, and then I think, "Now I have to find my way through it."

As a storyteller, I think where working in television can almost be like lifting weights - you really have to know what your story is about.