Michael Shanks Quotes

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.

Writing a script is hard, I've discovered.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

I always write the script by myself.

TV is a writer's medium.

Lots of shows are written completely in the writer's room. And I wouldn't say 'The Walking Dead' is that way. There are three levels to it. There's us in the room. The writers going off by themselves. And me working with the writers on a finished script.

But the longer I'm in the business, you see a lot of times these screenplays have been rewritten 5 times and you're not really offending an author.

I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.

Nine months after we submitted the original screenplay for 'The Attack,' the studio that was involved pulled out. I've been told that 'you don't write in a French way; you can't make these multicultural films.'

It's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.

I don't know if I'm always going to be acting. Maybe when I grow up, I will be a scriptwriter. I already have a few scripts in my head.

I read a lot of script. In my opinion, most of them aren't good or aren't about people.

There have been times - and not just on 'The Newsroom,' but on 'The West Wing,' 'Sports Night,' 'Studio 60'... - where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn't good enough.

I know firsthand how much work has usually gone into a screenplay, so if there's something that rings false or a line that I would think would need a tweak or something, I will think long and hard before I even recommend changing it. In that sense, I'm very faithful to the scripts that I get - if they're good scripts.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

I take time to write my script, if I have more scripts, I will make more movies.

If my film fails, I never think it was because the script was weak.

I'd been acting since I was a teenager. I'd come to the point where I was writing my own movies of the week for TV. That was fun.

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

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.

I have always wanted to be more interested in scripts.

When I was a staff writer on 'NYPD Blue,' it was truly my job to hear David Milch's voice for that show and to deliver episodes that embodied that voice.

I've read many great samples, both of existing shows I liked and original pilots, and definitely hired the writers - or, at least, tried to!