Todd Haynes Quotes

I think cable TV in the United States is amazing right now. It's reinvented television, really. What's going on in the States with some of these cable shows like 'Breaking Bad' and 'Mad Men' is amazing stuff.

I do prime time network shows like 'Blue Bloods.' I've done 'Fringe,' I've done 'The Good Wife,' done a lot of 'The Mentalist.'

I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan, I'm a 'Wire' fan, I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump.

A lot of writers dream of feature films, but television - by way of TNT, CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark Hall of Fame - has always called my name. And after seeing 'True Detective,' can there be any doubt that the storytelling on TV is as genius as it gets?

I'm not one of these people who say how much better American drama is than English. I find it mostly too American, except for The Sopranos, which I think is the best thing.

I feel that 'Person of Interest' is the same quality as 'Brotherhood.' I think it's one of the smartest network television shows on the air today. The audience is a wide range of individuals.

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.

At the same time, television theatre became more visibly active.

More and more, you're seeing television shows that are better than 99% of the movies out there. I mean, you watch something like the last couple of seasons of 'The Sopranos,' which is some of the most sophisticated writing I've ever seen filmed and some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen - and it's a TV show.

If you had ever told me that the finest film work was going to be done on television, I wouldn't have believed it.

I'm an actor, and so of course I want to see TV companies making good dramas. I want that to be a priority.

We are in this amazing age of television where there's an incredible amount and an incredible quality of television, of long-form narrative.

Generally, I am losing faith in telly, as we do have good dramas but not as many as there should be.

I think HBO and a couple of the other cable channels in America are making some of the best television that's ever been made.

'Gilmore Girls' was the first show I ever worked on and was my absolute favorite show at the time.

It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV. I think it's a phenomenal time for TV and to be involved in it.

I've come up in the scripted world, and I have wished there were more time slots for us to tell compelling scripted stories and not fill the airwaves with a lot of fluff and tabloid entertainment.

I would love to be in a Jimmy McGovern drama on TV, but there is no way he would ever ask me unless it would be to play a lawyer or something.

Listen, a cable series is a beautiful thing because there's such amazing writing happening on television, and it's a schedule that allows you to do a play or two. There's a reason everybody wants that job!

Well, certainly I think American television is - that's proper TV.

I think television scripts have become really intriguing and well-done. And writers have stopped drawing any actual line between film and television they used to never cross.

You can't really compare any TV show to a show written by Aaron Sorkin.

It's funny - I was a big fan of 'The Sopranos.' It became kind of a threat to 'The X-Files' in a way because they could play with language, character, and story in ways that we never could because of the limitations of network television.

I love television. Television is a great medium; I'm fortunate enough to direct amazing television.

In TV, you can carve out a beautiful little niche like 'Breaking Bad' did. Like 'The Wire' did. Like 'Homeland' did.