The Hollywood thing is - like, it feels like the biggest thing in the world, and yet it's the smallest town.
I don't think there's ever a winner in a feud. It's about emotional pain and an inability to conquer the pain.
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they're icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.
As a showrunner, you can never be a 'maybe.' When I do movies, there is a lot of, 'Maybe' and, 'Let's investigate that.' But for TV, it has to be yes or no.
When I talk to young people, I always tell them the biggest lesson I learned was that you shouldn't care about the outcome. If it fails, it fails. Every failure will groom you for your next big reward.
I'm fascinated by the whole clown phobia thing because I personally don't have it.
I'm very black and white about what I like or don't like, and I've always been that way.
I've always been sort of, 'I love it,' or, 'I hate it,' and I think, as a result, I've always been a polarizing person. You either love me or you hate me. There's not a lot of 'Hmmm.'
I came of age during AIDS and the terror of that and the sadness and the death and the overwhelming despair.
I love Sarah Jessica Parker; I've worked with her. I think she's amazing... She's a great producer and has a great business acumen.
Yeah, at home it's all moonbeams and puppy-dog tails, so I guess I do have a darker side - and I like writing about it.
I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that's their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.
Part of being an artist is being able to write about the world you live in and the times that you've been a part of.
You can't be the enfant terrible when you have the enfant at home.
Tone is everything in TV.
When I was starting out in Hollywood, everything was such a battle.
Sometimes in entertainment, when people have done the Academy Awards - like, for example, in 'The Bodyguard' - I just didn't believe it; it didn't feel authentic.
I was an altar boy, with a very strict father. And movies were always my escape.
I wanted to create a culture that allowed my children to see the world differently, if only from a strictly visual perspective: to have a child see a room where half of the people are women and minorities is so powerful. I think everyone wants for their children a world that's better than the one they came up in.
The only way to get through the life I had was just to have a big head of steam and determination.
