Mitchell Hurwitz Quotes

I know what it takes to go from the point where someone's looking at a newspaper article, and thinking, 'Oh, this would make a great TV series,' to the point where you're actually on a set and there's a camera aimed at someone.

On a soap opera, you'll do an episode and a half a day, and in prime time television, you're hustling to get an episode done in eight days. That's a little bit frustrating sometimes. But there's also something exhilarating about it. It's kind of like live theater in a way, where you get one crack at it.

I pitched a storyline, and as far as I know it's been picked up. It's for the third and final episode I'm contracted to do. But I can't give any spoilers.

Now that I know what goes into making a pilot, keeping it on the air, and keeping your fans, I'm at a point now where I do a pilot and just hope for the best. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.

With TV, you just have to finish the days and get the episodes out. And it's always going to be an impossible schedule. That's the funny thing with TV that not a lot of people realize.

Sometimes they keep us in the dark, but it's TV, so sometimes they keep us in the dark because even they don't know yet. You know what I mean? So, it sort of develops as it goes along and according to various needs that arise.

With TV, your first draft just doesn't matter. It's a skeleton, and then there's draft after draft after draft, and so many other factors influence it. It's just a whole different kind of storytelling.

It's pretty surreal to be doing a show on HBO with pals.

It's just a challenge doing live television every week; you know, it's a challenge to come up with new material every week and stuff like that and try to keep it current, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, you know, it's a kind of a stressful environment.

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 essentially have always directed everything on my TV show without using that title; I edited and wrote all my stuff.

In TV you have to open a show the subject, you deal with an idea. Then you deal with a sponsor - but fast. Then you have to announce the guest stars. As a result, you have a big fat 30, 40 seconds - 50 if they really lose their heads - to put together an unbelievable mishmash.

When you're working on a TV show, your schedule can be very unpredictable, which means it's harder to book shows.

[Townies] was a huge cast. It was a bit ungainly, I think with 12 regular characters they had to keep writing for.

I enjoy writing scripts. I can find out what happens. With an outline, I feel like I'm doing an architectural diagram of something.

I've never produced a series, so for me [X-men] was a wonderful challenge.

Sometimes when you have an abundance of time and money, it's less conducive to the creative process. I like the urgency of the television schedule and the television price point. It's fluid. You figure it out on the day, and I love the challenge of problem-solving.

It's not often I get to do a film that turns out good. Plus, there just aren't that many great directors out there. There are a thousand different decisions that need to be made with each script and it's the good directors that can make those decisions. It's a long and complicated process in regards to what looks good on paper. Working on a bad film can be fun too. It can be a good exercise that gets you writing.

I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to follow your initial [writing] plan too stringently. A story needs room to grow and evolve.

I tried my hand at writing, I tried to write out a little script - and it's not too bad. Mostly, though, it let me understand how incredibly difficult that job is. I can't even imagine doing it on a weekly basis for a series in any way. That's tough. I think I'll try to leave that to smarter people than me.

The comedies are not a million laughs on the set. Its business and the dramas are business as well, really. When I'm writing it I struggle more with drama because I started out in comedy.

I love to play with language; make it do tricks, turn a word inside out to see if it's got a hidden meaning tucked away somewhere, or perhaps find that it's capable of an extra entendre or two. . . . Plotting is nothing I did, or do, naturally. It is the hardest part of the writing process. No matter how many times you plot a script successfully, the next one, representing new and uncharted territory, convinces you that you really don't know how to do it at all.

We get to get into the nitty-gritty and the minutiae of the way they relate now, and that's really valuable. We just have to make sure we don't repeat ourselves and we plot this thing so it doesn't dead end too much, and so that's the challenge really. It's like, how do you keep those balls in the air and make it exciting still?

I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.

Writing is very difficult. You have 120 pages of blank paper and it's like, "Go fill that up with some funny stuff," and that's challenging.