But it's true, when you see some television, you carry it with you. It's like 90210. Tell me what young shows were being done then... We were thrilled about the ratings around the world.
As a fan, when I hear that a film is going to be turned into a television show, I do go to that place immediately of, 'Is it going to be any good? Is it going to be a waste of time? Why are they doing it?' It's '12 Monkeys,' and '12 Monkeys' is awesome, so I wanted to be a part of it and work on it.
When you're done with a job, even if you do stay in contact with certain people, it's never quite the same. It's a unique experience when you're working on a film or a television show together. You're together for 16 hours every day, sometimes six days a week. You're just never going to have that proximity again. So you miss people.
Television is a visual medium. You have to create some kind of visual interest. And it's entertainment for your eyes.
I grew up in the theatre. It's where I got my start. Writing a television drama with theatrical dialogue about the theatre is beyond perfection.
I've loved every minute I've spent in television. And I've had much more failure, as traditionally measured, than success in television. I've done four shows, and only one of them was the 'West Wing.'
If I am writing a movie and I am stuck, I can call the studio and tell them it's delayed. You can't do that with television - you have air dates to meet.
I find television, and particularly live television, very romantic: the idea that there is this small group of people, way up high, in a skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, beaming this signal out into the night.
A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.
It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.
