You can be a sophisticated person and still have really old ideas about what love is supposed to look like.
— Marti Noxon
I've watched my fair share of 'Housewives.' And I just felt a little dirty afterwards.
The thing that can happen in a TV room is you can get 'teamthink': you can all go down a crazy path together.
The best feeling you can ever have when you're working on a show is that the characters are still inside you, and they have a lot left to do.
A great thing, which I don't do enough, is to take a break from producing and try to just take stuff in, like go to the theater.
I love being in a public space where teenagers are talking. And the funny thing is that it hasn't changed that much. There's certainly slang that I'm not familiar with, but among the average teen, it's still the same.
Test audiences are notorious for getting kind of itchy when people talk too much, and you have to trust your instincts that they don't necessarily understand that you're not digesting the movie on a scene-by-scene basis.
When you work in television, it's an isolating experience. You rarely ever get to watch it with an audience.
I'm a big believer in 'Trojan horses' - There are certain themes that are more palatable when wrapped in something fun or distracting.
On 'Sex and The City', when Carrie talked about money problems, I would always think, 'Sell your shoes!'
Too many people will die needlessly if we go back to letting people buy junk insurance or insurance that doesn't help people with diseases related to mental illness.
We did have 'The Bronze', a very active website on 'Buffy' where we got a lot of feedback and post-game discussion. But now it's important to be engaged in the discussion while the show is airing and right after.
With everything I do, I strive for a balance of tone, where it's not just one thing.
You should live hoping you are going to offend people, because then you're doing something.
Any press is good press.
I think my biggest problem as a creative person trying to work within a business for profit was that it was very important to me that people liked me. Over the years, observing other showrunners who made work that I so admired, I realized that that had to go. This couldn't be my first priority. My first priority had to be the work.
I think I've also grown a little bit in that I'm not so easily dissuaded if I really believe something.
It's humiliating, being told you're not responsible enough to make your own choices in life.
It's so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them 'un-gay' again. Like, once you become gay, you've crossed over, or you're not allowed to be a person who doesn't want to be defined by a label like that.
One of the good things about consulting is that you leave the writers' room for a couple of days, things progress, you come back, and you might have a fresher take.
The truth is there's a difference between the competition shows where you're testing skills and the type of shows where you're trying to create drama.
I thought about being an actor, and I thought about directing, but writing truly became something I needed to do just to stay sane.
That's a big part of the process: making the right choice from the beginning. Not getting distracted by shiny things.
I spent some time in Vegas when I was doing some canvassing for Obama back in 2008.
The dream of doing what I do started with watching movies by Mr. Spielberg, like 'Close Encounters,' 'Poltergeist,' and 'E.T.' That was the beginning of my obsession.
I think women can relate to the feeling that we're internalizing too many demands, and we're trying to be good at everything, but one day, we're going to snap.
Being the director - way fancier than 'just' being the writer. People call you 'talent.'
I bemoaned the pending loss of Obamacare/the Affordable Care Act.
I think we're in a time when people are much more interested in a show than where you find it.
Keanu has such generosity and intelligence, not to mention a warmth that I'm eager to tap into. We're all incredibly excited that he's agreed to help us bring 'To the Bone' to life.
In 'UnREAL', for me, just being so openly feminist, just being so overtly, like, 'This show is about women who are not necessarily likable, doing a job that is despicable, and we are not going to be afraid of that.'
When people are like, ''UnREAL' is so dark,' I'm like, 'Hahahahahahahahahaha! Wait 'til you get to 'Sharp Objects.''
I think there's a good-er divorce. I think that's absolutely possible. There's a better way to do it and everything in between, and then, of course, there's the disastrous way to do it.
You really can't quantify what 'Dietland' is.
Not proud. But I watched 'The Bachelor' only once, and I really felt, after that experience, that I could never do it again. I felt it was so morally compromising, as a woman.
Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over again until it doesn't make sense anymore. Like, you say it until you don't know what you're saying.
Women want to watch the dark stuff.
I was raised by a lesbian feminist who told me that shaving my legs was giving into the patriarchy. So, I consider myself to be a bona fide feminist.
The great thing about the story of 'Twilight', or the story of 'I Am Number Four' is that you get to deal with real issues of identity and what people are going through and the choice of who you're going to be, but it's all large.
I've never had as much success as when I say to myself, 'I get that. I know what the feelings that that character would be going through would be like. I can feel a through line from beginning to end.'
I certainly often go to a movie and don't remember exactly what the trailer had in it, except that it looked cool.
I'm a huge fan of Kathryn Bigelow's 'Near Dark.'
I'm such a type A doer myself that if someone said I had a month off, I think I'd go crazy and try to organize the vacation resort!
'Just' writing is every bit as important as any other creative part of a film.
Scenes on phones are really boring!
I love characters who are really dedicated to a really bad plan.
Can't write worrying what the Internet's going to think.
There're been sort of a sea change in my work in general, in that the more personal, the universal it's become.
Eating disorders are A) not fun at parties, and B) they're not very fun in movies.
A show can be completely dead before you even get on the air. I've been privy to a couple of those.
