For many years, when I was starring on 'Touched by an Angel,' I produced on a number of television movies for CBS. I have always enjoyed the aspect of bringing something together and multitasking in that way.
Now I do perhaps three films or 17 TV movies a year.
Well I directed a few feature length things for HBO in the late eighties.
When the companies started making made-for-TV movies, people thought it was a fluke. Who would watch that? Because it's in your TV screen and not in a theater. Remember that?
There have been several television movies, 'Carrie 2,' two musicals! I remember thinking, the first time there was a musical on Broadway, 'Oh my gosh! The people who ordinarily go to the theaters, that's not really the audience.'
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.
Hal Holbrook was in one of my first television movies when I was about 18 or 19. He'd made such a strong impression on me and a lasting one in terms of what being an actor was.
A lot of people are doing television now. Great, legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you can't blame them, because they're still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations.
I think television is moving more into movies, particularly with serialization and almost cinematic proportions and expectations. A show like 'Game of Thrones' is a perfect example of that, or even a show like 'The Wire,' which isn't all about instant gratification it's about inviting someone into the long experience of television the way you'd be invited into a theater for two hours. So I think in that way, and the quality of writing in television is probably much better than most film writing.
I made a decision to live outside the city in northern California. My agent said to me, 'Kid, you're going to make a mint in television movies.' He positioned me, and we picked really good projects, and I cornered that market. They were 20-day projects.
