Carlton Cuse Quotes

The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.

The fact is that television, even before the movies, offered the chance to control our work and to get to do it again when we did something right. So television has always been better to writers than any other medium for a long time.

I believe people will be watching their TV screens for a long time and that TV channels have a long-term life.

When you work in television, it's an isolating experience. You rarely ever get to watch it with an audience.

I rode into the dawning world of television in 1944 on a train.

I feel terrible for directors of TV because all the episodes have to look the same. They make a great series for five or six years, and then when it's canceled, they can't break out on their own.

The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don't. I don't think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I'd like to think you need a singular vision to make good art.

In television, the writer-creator-showrunner is embraced as the creative mind.

Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore.

Television: A medium. So called because it's neither rare nor well done.

I came to NBC on 'Friday Night Lights' and they have supported that show and found ways - unprecedented ways - to keep it on the air for a long time. And when I came to them with the idea of doing 'Parenthood,' they not only supported me in doing it but also got behind it in such a way that we were able to put together this incredible cast.

If your ratings are high and there's money being made, you're allowed to be a perfectionist in television.

I knew 'True Detective' wasn't something I could allow anyone else to develop. But by the time HBO expressed an interest, I still had no real experience.

I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.

For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, 'Television won't like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!'

You simply cannot do a sitcom by committee. It will not work. You've got to have one or two clean, creative voices in charge, and there's got to be some faith by the studio and network in those people to make the right choices.

Eddie Murphy was my guy for a long time. My first exposure to 'SNL' was his 'Best Of' VHS, and I would watch it over and over again. He was one of the few people on the show to play with the live elements and engage with the audience.

People always ask why I stay in the online space versus going to TV or film, like most people would do, and the answer is that there's opportunity for innovation online - not only innovation in storytelling, but also innovation in how you interact with your audience and that is very fulfilling to me personally.

'Arrested Development' is great; Mitch Hurwitz is great. Plus, it's the one show I've ever had where, on the small parts, he just let me cast people.

As we began working toward the finale of 'Lost,' I knew there was no possible ending that was going to be universally loved, and I accepted that. We ended the story the way we wanted it to end, and we stand by it. On my Twitter feed, I still get ten to fifteen positive comments for every negative one.

Sometimes the fans want it both ways, of course. They want to feel like they're influencing the show, and at the same time, they want to think that showrunners have the story all mapped out in our brains. But it can't be both. In truth, we were usually far ahead of the fan feedback.

I love doing stand-up. It's so self-contained - you go there, you do it, you go home - but with telly, there are too many people involved with it with opinions. You have a product, and everyone wants to change it.

I'm supposed to be the director of a television company, but I've only ever seen that company as a vehicle for making the kind of programmes we wanted to make, getting our ideas on the screen.

I never know why shows succeed or don't succeed, which is why I look at it as, 'I'll do the best work that I can', and if the fans and people respond then I'm always really flattered and honored, and if they don't then I'll try and do something next time that they like better. But I have no idea what makes a hit show, I really don't.

In television, there's this weird sense of isolation from your audience; you kind of get this feeling that you write the show for you and your wife and your friends and the other people who work on the show. It's our little show, and then it goes out into the world, and somebody watches it.