I'm certainly a real homebody. But the truth is that I understand that desire to, in a way, go join the circus. That's what got me out of Long Island and into show business. I was like, 'I'm just going to have an adventure. I want to be a person that isn't surrounded by their mail and their cat.'
I really learned that, when I got into television, I really learned the power, how deeply it affects people to see themselves on television, to see something that they can relate to, that they feel is like them in some way; people feel validated. Its not a little thing. It really means a lot to people. It actually can change people.
I think you end up writing things you like. I like seeing actors playing two different parts at the same time. I think it's interesting. It kind of shows you two sides of a person.
I do love the idea of people at a certain time in their lives when they're questioning, figuring out who to be. I find that interesting, but honestly, I think it's like that at every time in your life.
When you're doing a series, you're really in a zone. You're thinking about those characters and their situations in a free-floating way all the time. They live with you all the time. So it's just as natural as breathing to be having ideas and thinking about what they're thinking about.
Series television is kind of intensive in terms of time. You fall hard for TV writing, but it's almost love-hate. You're under pressure all the time, but that pressure gets interesting things out of you that are, you know, mysterious.
The whole idea of a dream, to me, is a mystery plane. Things are operating there that tell us the real truth. The stuff going on inside us that we don't express or even know about pours out in our dreams.
I loved the whole idea, first of all, of what friendship is. Very often, there are people that somehow you don't know how to declare that you are their friend, but you are their friend. That happens in a lot in high school. And outside of high school.
I consider myself a writer. I always wanted to act, and as a teen, I studied acting devotedly. Eventually, I got writing work, but very little acting work.
I realized later how much my acting experience influenced my writing and how it helped me to write for other actors.
I care about actors, and I understand them in a very personal way. I'm not saying every writer has to do that, but in my case, it's been helpful. I can put myself into the scene and think, 'What would it be like to act this?' Any writer who's really good probably does that to some extent.
I don't think of myself as a producer. In television, it's part of the business - if you progress and become successful as a writer, you're called a writer-producer. What that means is that you have a lot of say in casting and behind-the-scenes stuff. But I'm just a writer.
The discovery I made was that, really, in America, if you went to high school in our country, it doesn't really matter where you went to high school. In a funny way, all high schools are the same.
In my life, it's always been about who I'm going to collaborate with. Less important to me is what the subject is.
As a writer who has collaborated on projects, you give your life over to that project.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I didn't really know anything about Pearl Jam. Of course, I knew who they were, but I had never really sampled them.
Camp is like this set-apart world where people go to try to change who they are, and yet change is really scary.
For me, being a writer, you want to communicate with people, but if your goal is that every person is going to love what you do, then you're always going to be disappointed.
The Huntington Theatre has a really fine reputation. I was keenly aware of how well thought of they are and that they develop and support new plays.
