It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone, or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with.
Did people's attitudes towards me change after I appeared on TV? Yeah, definitely. During my career I've had some flak - particularly doing television.
Television has taught me an economy of style I didn't have before. I feel it has done me nothing but good.
The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.
People say, "Well, you went on television, it enlarged your readership." It did not at all, not at all. I might as well tell you, I lost some readership, because the profound audience felt somehow bothered by my too easy manner.
Largely because of television, instead of looking over into that spacious building, we are, in effect, living inside of it. That is your fate in this generation. You are living in that great and spacious building.
I really learned that, when I got into television, I really learned the power, how deeply it affects people to see themselves on television, to see something that they can relate to, that they feel is like them in some way; people feel validated. Its not a little thing. It really means a lot to people. It actually can change people.
In the 1950s we use to feel that television was taking away our comic readership; with today's exciting, powerfully visual movies I have to wonder about their effect on the kids' loyalty to the comic book medium all over again.
We can't negate television. Unfortunately, I do feel in many ways that it did kill my movie career. It did do that. But would I not do it again? Do I have any regrets about doing it? No.
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.
I haven't had television since 1991, and it definitely influences me. As a child of the 1970s, I couldn't hold a narrative in my head; I was lucky if I could hold a joke in my head, because every time you turn on television or radio, it wipes the slate clean - at least in my case.
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.
Having watched television, I would kind of play the role or picture myself on a television show or something like that. That's maybe always been true of a certain type of kid, even before television maybe, but I think it's been amplified to an insane level.
Certainly, if it had been anything other than an HBO show I'd probably still be in Mexico now with a Mexican wife and kids.
