On a TV show, for instance, dancers have to be paid for a week and a half rehearsal time. So unless they're vital to a production, they're just not used.
You know, dramas are much more expensive to do than say a comedy, so any kind of deficit like that is picked up on when it comes time for them to pick up new shows.
I knew from being on 'The Shield,' and having some experience in the financials of all of it, that after seven seasons, the production model changes and reverts back. It becomes a much more expensive show to do, and perhaps the economic feasibility of it somewhat goes away.
I guess HBO did a giant 'War in the Pacific' mini-series that cost, like, a fortune, and there was a little moment where they literally had no money. And even though the show had become kind of a cult hit, there was an issue of whether they could actually afford to do it.
It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.
The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit 'comedians' and create very cheap television programming.
When we started looking at the bigger television ecosystem, you see that there's not that many serialized TV shows being made for TV. The economics are lousy: They don't sell into syndication well; they're expensive to produce.
I think that 'Lost' is a bit of a dinosaur in terms of the type of show it is. The economics just don't support making a show this big and complicated profitable enough for a network.
Somebody once told me - and I could be wrong about this - that The West Wing was, on any given episode, $300,000 over, on average. Now today, if you were $10,000 over budget, they would cancel you. For sure.
During The Hills, we were not allowed to wear outfits twice, so I asked [MTV] to supply me with a wardrobe, but apparently I had to buy it all myself.
You don't have the economy of scale of building a set once and casting once. You blow up the world, basically, at the end of each episode.
You can't do anything yourself on TV... unless you have a LOT of money, but you can do an independent movie.
