Ted Sarandos Quotes

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 started writing prose before I started writing television. Then 'Breaking Bad' came around, and to me, writing 'Breaking Bad' is like writing a novel each season. So it's been very creatively satisfying writing for the show.

Certain people want to binge-watch stuff, and they want 10 solid hours of whatever, not realizing that writing 10 hours of quality television is a exhausting experience. Writing an hour and a half is a warm hug compared to writing 10 hours of television.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.

Even though 'Glee' is sometimes a hard road, I am very excited about writing a multi-year arc.

Doing one movie every two years is about all I can handle 'cause, being the creator at '30 Rock', my year there starts in the middle of June and goes back around until March.

I think there's a lot of interesting stuff on TV. I feel much more optimistic about TV than I do about movies. There will always be good movies but I think, for the most part, it's always going to be a huge fight to get those movies made. TV is the best place to be as a writer, I think.

I think I might want to get into development, as in developing my own sort of piece, whether it be for the stage or the big screen or for television.

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.

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.

For 'Breaking Bad,' it was like, that's one of the best pilots, probably the best pilot I have ever read.

That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job.

Writing for a soap - writing for 25 characters day in, day out - is one of the most difficult jobs in Hollywood.

For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.

When you start working on a series, it's almost too much work. It's like a movie a week.

The director in TV and the writer and the creator are working very much hand in hand.

We don't feel pressure of, 'Let's make this really raunchy.' It's more about making a good story, which is 10 times harder. The raunchy stuff's really easy for us.

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!

I have a pretty big TV background, and I have clocked so many hours in so many writers' rooms over the years.

But he knew people and he was head writer for Have Gun Will Travel, and if you took those early Star Treks that we did and put us in a western wardrobe and put us on wagon train going west, we can say the same lines.

The whole thing of doing a TV series, I find it very daunting not knowing where the story's going.

If one day a TV series comes into my head, and that is what I want to write, I'll write it. It just depends what story is in my brain at the time.

I've continued to write fiction since being in television. TV is a different kind of writing, but it's all writing. It was David Milch of 'Deadwood' who helped me to see it that way. We later collaborated on the short-lived 'John from Cincinnati,' but I'm very proud of the work we did together.

Well, you know, I don't think anyone who writes a television series has a master plan from the beginning, and knows all the character traits, and everything that's going to happen.

I'll always love movies. But there's something I love very much about TV, when you shoot episodes while other episodes are still being written.