I think television has always been one to replicate when something's successful. I don't think there's quite as much innovation.
American mass media culture, with its celebrities, shopping hysteria, sound bites, formulaic plots, received ideas, and nauseating repetitions, depresses me.
Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.
When I watch a show, I want to feel like it is coming out of someone's head, not out of a boardroom.
TV by and large has become a dime-store business so far as creativity and talent are concerned. The half-hour and sixty-minute series rattle off the production lines like cans of beans, with an occasional dab of ham inside.
Television is a producers' medium. There is a formula with a certain number of closeups for each show.
What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.
If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.
I kept the same suit for six years and the same dialogue. They just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady.
In the U.K., there's absolutely no money for television. So you can do pretty much whatever you want. They're not losing money on any of the shows, so they'll give you a lot of creative freedom. In the United States, there are millions and millions of dollars at stake, so they need a sure formula.
I never, in anything I've ever done, tried to get you to like it. I was never going to succeed at that. That's not the way most entertainment is made. Most entertainment is trying to get you. It's tested, like toothpaste.
Not so much in Canada, but certainly in the US, as I'm sure you know, money is all, and if they can get another 26 programs of the same thing even though it advances the culture or those actor's careers not at all it doesn't matter.
Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.
There's still formulaic stuff on network television, but there's also more of an opportunity to have your way with storytelling, especially in sitcoms. That's what the difference is.
People love cliches. If you can give people cliches, that's very good TV, then.
Most entertainment is trying to get you. It's tested, like toothpaste.
I want to see more young filmmakers, and specifically filmmakers who have a unique voice. I wouldn't mind seeing less of the attempt to force-feed people what others think they want, if that makes sense - whatever the formula is that some people seem to operate under, like needing a certain star, or needing a certain thing in order to get a piece made.
I hate Calvin and Hobbes. I think its a big re-hash of formula kid strips.
I don't want to do the song-dance formula; there are many people doing it, right?
Most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode.
But this is where you get all the market research and things get in danger of becoming formulaic, and where you depend on brands and getting recognised actors. It's the thing that precludes risk very often, otherwise everyone would be avant-garde all over the place.
In a weird way, riffing on genres is kind of a reaction to formula. When you watch so much of the programmers and the films that you just think you've seen before, it's kind of going back to the well in terms of trying to conjure up the spirit of what made you excited about films in the first place.
The last thing we would want is for our fans to feel that we're trying to find the 17th opportunity to sell them the same song.
