Theresa Rebeck Quotes

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.

With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.

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.

In television writing, even if you're running the writers room, it's a writers room.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

Television offered me the opportunity to do new things; I had written a lot of scripts other than scary movies. I had actually written some romantic comedies and stuff that I really wanted to try my hand at, and nobody would let me do that. Television allowed me to do anything I wanted.

For a writer, working in television is an incredibly rewarding medium. You're in charge of all aspects of production and get to see your vision come to life every week.

I love television, and my love for it has made me curious about writing it. It feels like television's moving toward something more novelistic, and that's what I started wanting to do. But I can't say that I'm dying to get notes from a studio. The artistic control that you get as a playwright is worth its weight in gold.

Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.

It's hard to find a play that's right for me to do. Rather than waiting around for the right script to come along, I decided to write one myself.

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

I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.

Writing for television is completely different from movie scriptwriting. A movie is all about the director's vision, but television is a writer's medium.

I have as much artistic freedom in my television work as I have in my films.

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.

But if I really want to produce my own work and tell stories, then I will.

I read every draft of every episode of every series produced at FX.

If someone said, 'Sit down and write a 'Community' episode,' I would be panicked.

I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.

Writing is getting killed by too many chefs. Back in the Bogart days, it started with great scripts. You had a writer, and he wrote a script, and that was your movie. I think that's been watered down a bit lately.

My goal was, and still is, to write first, direct my own stuff whenever possible and control my own creative destiny.

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.

TV is the place for writers to live. This is where you have creative control and you're constantly writing. 'Twilight' had almost a TV schedule to it. I was constantly working on these projects. There was not a whole lot of lull but I've gone onto other feature projects that's like, 'Okay, I'll get back to you on notes.'

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

TV is a writer's medium.