Unconventional Programming Quotes

Reality TV started becoming big when I was in college, around 2002. I remember everyone kept saying, 'Man, you guys should do reality.' And I was always like, 'I don't know.'

The Connection Machines owned by the United States government laboratories were made available to me because they were considered impossible to program and there was no great demand for them at that time.

There are shows that are monolithic successes on TV that nobody in the business ever watches one episode of.

When I brought 'Sex and the City' to HBO, I wanted to do something independent, where I could be like, 'I don't care if anybody watches this thing. Just let me do something that I would love to see.' Honestly, the success of 'Sex and the City' was what was most surprising to me. It was sort of like the anti-TV-show in my mind.

Anthology shows as a whole scare people. The networks can't quite get their heads around it.

I think that's where reality TV works - you don't know where it's going.

I also love Mole, the unsung hero of reality programming.

The fact 'Twin Peaks' had a life at all took most of us in the cast by surprise. We thought it would be too unusual for network television. The original intention was that it would be a two-hour movie. If the network didn't want to pick it up as a series, it could just show that. But ABC took a chance.

I tended to do a lot of shows that were ahead of their time and didn't run very long.

Reality television is to television what marble and gold are to real estate. The point is to dispense with the idea of taste. It's all id. The more unrestrained the better. We all know that 'reality' in reality television is not real. That anybody who would participate in reality television is a fake. But pretending otherwise makes them real.