Rafi Fine Quotes

People think "The Office" was improvised, but it's all on the page. We do that because what we found is that in the early days of "The Office," we went in with it sort of 80 percent scripted and we did some things and then we improv'd and we did - you know, and it gets a laugh on the floor because it's the first time they've heard it.

I think it's a lot easier to put together a reality show than to actually create a scripted show.

We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.

In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera.

Working on 'Dexter' is like shooting one big movie every year.

You learn, even at 'S.N.L.,' that the funniest scripts a lot of the time were written with the actor, because they know what makes people laugh. It's always going to be better if they own it.

The great thing about 'Justified' is that the writers will craft a scene, but if the actors come up with a great idea, they're 100% for it.

One of the things that takes a bit of getting used to on an American series is having a different director, and often writer, every week.

Together with script writers Syd green and Dick Hills, we worked on the comedy ideas for this series.

In television, a sitcom is probably the closest thing to what it's like working in the theater.

One of the problems with 'SNL' is that, if you tried to adlib, the director would put you off camera and off the mic, so only you would know that you ever did it. The director always directed to the script; he wasn't listening to what you were doing. He was calling shots whilst looking at the page.

With 'The Soup,' obviously it has to be totally scripted out, and then, within that, I improvise punchlines and sometimes setups if I can't read the teleprompter properly.

'Big Bang' is very tightly scripted. Because we shoot in front of a live audience, it's basically like doing a filmed piece of theatre, really.

Sometimes there were certain things in 'Limmy's Show' where I'd be having to come up with six episodes and as a result there was stuff in there that wasn't my favourite and I'd think, 'ach I'll shove that in this episode.'

It was somewhere in doing the last season of 'Leverage' that John Rogers and I became confident that we had developed an all-new production technique where we could put more on the screen with very little money. So we started to get more comfortable with the idea of trying to tackle 'The Librarians.'

So much of comedy happens between your chin and your shoulders. Nobody tells you when you get your own TV show that you're going to watch yourself in the edit room over and over and over again. It's a tough lesson.

Part of the mystique of shows like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' is the idea that they begin with a couple of plot lines, and then a bunch of geniuses improvise dialogue. It's not quite that unstructured and loose. It makes for a good urban myth, but everything's a little more tightly scripted and programmed than that.

Oh, 'Sports Night' was tough because 'Sports Night' was... Well, you know, it's like Mamet. It's Sorkin. And I didn't realize that you had to immediately be off of the other actors' last line in their dialogue.

Half-hour comedy shows are like a play, one night a week.

I'm not a Larry David. I don't have a 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and a 'Seinfeld' in me.

I will very happily grow old in the comedic world of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, if they would keep having me over and over.

Working on 'WAGS' is obviously very different than working on wrestling television. It's very different in the way that there is not nearly as much to do for 'WAGS.'

I love good TV shows, but it's not what I do. I kind of sculpt my films as I go along. And TV is all about writing, so you just shoot, shoot, shoot what's written.

'Dinner' is completely scripted. There are some improv elements, but I'm not interested in pranking people. It's more like a play than standup.

Making '1600 Penn' was really fun, and I learned a lot.