My greatest regret is that my mother died before I could help her materially.
— James L. Brooks
When it comes to being confused about what to do about life, that's been me and will always be me.
The fact is that television, even before the movies, offered the chance to control our work and to get to do it again when we did something right. So television has always been better to writers than any other medium for a long time.
In television writing, even if you're running the writers room, it's a writers room.
I had no road map for fatherhood; I had no personal history to draw from.
I'm a journalism junkie.
Making an authentic film about anything is difficult.
A television job that's working is the best job in the world.
You know you're in love when you're more yourself than you ever imagined possible.
I was raised primarily by women. I had a mother who almost killed herself to survive, I had a sister who was eight years older who was like a second mother, and my mother had two sisters. In the environment I grew up in, I heard a lot of female perspectives.
If you ever catch a great boss, it's just such a rare thing, and it's amazing.
I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.
I always think a successful television series is the best job because it gives you community, it doesn't demand temporary insanity the way movies do, and you can be almost a normal person.
I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.
A lot of things just aren't true any more.
I've done it with Broadcast News-where there was no finish line, there was no agenda that I had to move all the characters to this point, that I was sort of open to what happens.
I value comedy. I value somebody who can be funny.
It's craziness to see yourself as damaged goods, so I was the goofy kid who'd stop a strange adult and say, 'Do you know how to get to Palm Avenue?' They'd say no, and I'd say, 'You go two blocks and turn right. You can't miss it.'
Watching people see your picture for the first time is such a public agony.
We can go years without making a picture, and that's fine.
I worked for CBS News in the aftermath of all the greatness. I actually brought coffee to Edward R. Murrow.
If you write about a process you're about to go through, market research, and you go through it, and it doesn't echo what you've written about, you've failed.
When I wrote a gay character, I spent six months asking questions I've never asked a gay friend, the questions you don't ask just because you don't have the right to do it.
I was at CBS News on a fluke. I replaced somebody who was on vacation. I worked as a copy boy, then became a news writer.
Nothing is a matter of course when you get to do your own thing. It's always a gift that can stop giving and probably will.
I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'
That's the great thing about a series: you're driving to work, and you have an idea for a story for your characters, and you can go into work, and it's gonna be a television show. I mean that's what's great about the job.
I was only in college, unfortunately, for, um, a year. I think my major was public relations, and I had no idea what it meant except it seemed maybe attainable.
When you work alongside somebody day in and day out, the relationships tend to be wonderful: they're lifelong.
I always loved writing, but never considered that I could do it professionally.
Linking up the things you were with the things you become is what growing up is.
Media reporting denied privacy to anybody doing what I do for a living. It was no longer possible to work on your picture in privacy.
I have a lot of nightmares.
I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.
With music, you can put sophisticated thoughts in a child's head - it gives you a whole new avenue to express ideas.
In my mind, if you write a comedy where human beings experience pain, you're just being realistic.
I love bingeing. 'The Wire' was my first binge, and the thing about bingeing is, when you are doing four or five hours a day for a number of days, it becomes a literary experience, closer to reading.
I could see no position to say, 'I'm going to make a living as a writer.' But I went to classes for it; I read every play in 'Theater' magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway - I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I'd see what shows I could get into.
'Fargo,' man, with so many actors playing so many great characters, and then they do another season, and it changes all over again? It's wild.
The remarkable thing about 9/11 was that journalism pretty much put down its badges. People didn't worry about reacting as human beings. People who weren't reporters reported. David Letterman was sort of a brilliant reporter for a second - but it was a way nobody had ever covered a story. They just presented what was inside themselves.
I think you always want to have a project where it's not about you: where you're serving it. Where it has needs, and you're trying to meet those needs, so you're trying to lift it out of you and put it out there and then say to people, 'Hey, I think that's it; let's head that way.'
I saw 'Annie Hall' with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.
I don't know whether I have ideas all the time. I think I'm curious about things all the time; I think I'm always curious, and I think I'm always interested in whatever passes by, and I know I tend to think about things, and I tend to talk about things, and sometimes that takes root and gives me something to chase.
Working on any show that works is the best job you can possibly have in any area of the business. You've got so much going for you, a good community, everybody's hanging together, and you get to do it every week.
I love it if comedy reflects real life because to me it's more reassuring that we'll get through.
I came to 20th Century Fox to do movies, and then they started a network, and they asked me to do a show as part of their starting what became the Fox network.
I laugh every day. There are days when my laughs are pretty hollow. Dust comes out of your mouth, and your bones make a funny sound. But I'm laughing.
I always fight hard to push a movie to the point where it pulls me.
I took some time out for life.
Kids in general make things fresh and alive and they have this great appreciation for, Holy mackerel, we're making a movie!
