When you're trying to come up with an idea for a movie it's actually the hardest part - the germ of the idea. Inevitably you think of something that would be great and then discover that it was on an episode of The Simpsons.
If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
If you think about filmmaking as an entire spectrum, starting with the writer and ending with maybe the marketing department, the actor's contribution is a rather slender band.
There's no better place to do a longform project than HBO. I loved the creative teams I got a chance to work with.
Sometimes when I'm reading a script, I can't quite believe that this is going on television alongside cereal commercials.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
Theatre is done largely for the love of the craft. Television makes you famous. And films immortalize you. That's the relationship between the three.
I want to try something on situational comedy.
Every big-budget film is powered by a director's vision. I blindly follow the instructions of my director, believe in him, and deliver what he exactly wants from me.
When you have really good writing, you're compelled by the actors who are in it, and you may think it's the actors or the design or the filmmaking of it, but then you're like, 'Well, the base is a really rich story that these guys have created.'
People sometimes think that a video pops out of my head with no more work than extracting a booger. Every video is a challenge (an exciting one, sure, but a challenge.) Every collaboration is complicated.
I'm a logic monster, if things don't make sense I've gotta make sense of them. I enjoy helping to develop material for movies, it's a way for me to get into the part.
A writer doesn't really have much of a function on a movie set.
At the end of the day, the one commonality that both Hindi cinema and Hollywood share is that they are full of talented and inspirational people. Outside of this, there are many differences, from the scheduling and rehearsal to promotion and directing techniques.
When you make a film, everyone wants to define it.
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we'd go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father's televised service for 17 years.
The cinema is a very truthful medium because the camera doesn't let you get away with anything. On stage, you can even loaf a little, if you're so inclined.
Then I became interested in drama, and almost by accident, I drifted into film.
I have always had a flair for acting; maybe that's why I enjoyed casting so much.
As a writer, I think about films I work on in a traditional Hollywood kind of a way. I'm curious to see how it translates.
I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.
I want to concentrate on movies. Bollywood is my priority, but that doesn't mean I will stop working on series. I want to do both.
It was interesting to write ad films and scripts for TV shows before I moved on to writing a feature film. That helped me grow as a writer, and I also found out how long I could sit in front of a computer and see something through.
I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.
If someone said, 'Sit down and write a 'Community' episode,' I would be panicked.
