Lee Mack Quotes

I've been a live performer longer than I've been a television performer. For me, live is where it's at.

I think in 2016 I'm going to focus on performing a lot more and doing as many shows as I can. There's plans to tour more, and that's where my heart is - doing the live shows.

I like radio and live performing stuff. I don't like the television stuff as much.

I love working in TV. TV is fast. You shoot it, and it's done quickly.

I did a lot of multi-cam shows when I first started coming out to L.A.

Television is a runaway train that you have to get on for nine months of the year. But at the same time, it has a wonderful immediacy.

We've been playing a lot with television. We have some shows set up and then some new shows that are about to be set up. That's gonna be kind of a fun thing for us as producers.

Television is very different than working on film. With films, you get to develop a set of characters, and then, at the end of the film, you have to throw them away.

I do like the process of producing. Later in my career, like when I had the TV show, I was a producer and I've been on a few things.

I love doing 'Castle.' We pump out 24 episodes in 10 months, and we work long hours. We do lots and lots of takes, and everyone there is a talent machine. It is a taxing endeavour to say the least, but when you get into a groove, it doesn't matter if you're tired, it doesn't matter if you're sick. You can do it.

Television is a tough business. It's not that easy to jump shops.

Artists should re-emphasize performance and de-emphasize recording. You always make more money if you have a healthy performing life than you will if you have even a moderately healthy recording life. Don't make recording the most important thing you do. Make performing the most important thing you do, and then you can make recordings and sell them at your shows, because record labels aren't going to be around to help you get on the radio stations, and the radio stations probably aren't going to play you anyway.

If I've done anything, I've brought passion to television.

Paddy Chayefksy was writing and it was a time where everybody was happy to be there [on TV].

I didn't want to do television at all. I really didn't want to do it. I really thought I was just going to be doing theater and doing movies.

American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.

Local television shows do not, in general, supply make-up artists. The exception to this is Los Angeles, an unusually generous city in this regard, since they also provide this service for radio appearances.

Back then, all the networks were still making a movie a week, virtually. So I did five of them that year. So it was just a nonstop... '92 was a great, nonstop ride in Vancouver.

Unless you're a directing producer of a television show, for the most part, the director comes in one week to direct and episode, and then leaves. I'd much rather produce television and occasionally direct an episode of a show I'm producing, then just come in as an outside director.

In television, the creator is really the voice...

[Television] is a great medium for writers, because there's just no time for a studio to interfere very long. You write it, you shoot it; it's on TV.

My favourite thing about touring is really the shows, because early on you can say it's definitely things like travel and seeing the world and stuff like that, but over time you don't really get to see the world. The most important thing in the day is the show. So that's why I do it.

When I write a film, the film gets handed off to a producer and a director and I go my merry way. With television, I am expected and contracted to stick around and actually produce what I've written.

I'm inordinately proud of Smash, on so many levels. The complexity of producing that show, every week, is just incredible. As a television producer and as a Broadway producer, which I once was, I am in awe of what we can do on that show, every week.

I am of the opinion that there is more high-quality television being produced than at any time in the history of television.