Penny Johnson Jerald Quotes

Nowadays, kids know how a programme like Merlin is made and how it works. But the show just seems to grow in popularity the more it goes on.

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.

When you have a script, and you're discussing what it can be, and who going to play what role, that's a kind of like a fantasy football game. You can imagine these different dream teams interpreting these characters that only exist in your head.

My day job is making TV shows.

With television, I worked on 'Lost,' where you'd just put your faith in the writers and go with what they're writing.

The good thing about being on a show like 'Justified' is that you stick to the premise, but not necessarily every single word that's on the page.

I've been lucky enough that in the U.K., I've done shows that have aired once a week. I make a show there that runs seasonally, and we make one episode a week, and that is great - the value of time. You can really think and finesse what you want to do.

I'm interested in producing more TV shows.

If I write a cop show, it's not up to me to decide how different it is from 'Law & Order.' I had screenwriters go on and on and on about how their cop show isn't like any other cop show on TV. They made very good points, and it absolutely doesn't matter. It's entirely up to the audience to decide.

The thrill of doing television versus features is, in television, you get to focus more on the characters.

TV and film are very different media with different requirements. In a TV show, you have actors and fellow writers and directors, who are interpreting your work. With a novel, you only have ink, words and your reader.

In the movies, you typically do get to see the script beforehand. TV is different because there are a lot of scripts in the future that you haven't seen. You commit to a show, and you have to believe in the showrunner and their team and the stories they're going to tell.

Whenever I like a character or a script, I take up the project and leave the rest to the audience.

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

I'd love to set up shop somewhere and develop projects - film, TV, digital would be a fun thing to do.

I'm pursuing film and TV, and it's exciting because I feel I can write in almost any genre now.

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.

I would love to be on a really good show and share all the stuff that goes into creating a big TV show and get my audience into it. I think that makes it personal and makes the audience feel like they're a part of it.

I just want to work on good scripts.

The stage gives you more control over your own work; in television, there's a distressing amount of communal writing. Unless it's your show, you have no control over that. You're at the mercy of whoever's running the show.

When you're doing the work, film and TV are exactly the same. TV is just film in reduced pieces.

We got kind of into a rhythm at 'Parks' because there were so many characters that we had an A story, a B story, and a C story just about every episode. So by the middle of that show's run, we always had three stories, and it worked really well.

To have the canvas of something like an Impact Wrestling, something that had TV and be able to be a creative input guy and come up with stuff, I would love to, and I would be up for that challenge.

The good thing about directing a screenplay that you've written is that you see the film in your head as you're writing it and then you see those decisions through to the end.

My job is really to... everyone is reading the script, and my job is to make sure we all interpret it in as much the same way as possible. And then I give them the freedom to sort of - to get their performance across and then make suggestions where things are not working and accentuate and push things where they really are working.