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I'm on record saying that HBO is the best television company in the world, and I believe they are. I think they absolutely understand how to make television that is really, really vital and interesting and visceral, and all the things that television really should be.

But HBO is less interested in how many people are watching than in how much the people who are watching are liking the show. They didn't set up their business model to make writers happy. It's just a nice unintended consequence.

The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody.

I really was interested in doing something for a premium channel like Showtime or HBO, just because you get to really let loose. I think they let their storylines go wherever they want, and it's really a special place to work.

One of the differences between HBO and other television is that they demand the same coverage that you would have in a feature film. We need to have all the shots in order to make it as rich and as stunning as it looks. We can't cut any corners.

It's nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There's a difference.

I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.

It used to be that you had to do a certain number of episodes to hit syndication in order to try to keep a show on, because it's important to the network because it sells good commercial time. That's really not how HBO does things.

We're closer to HBO than we are to the entire grid of cable on demand.

I just love shows that don't hand everything to you, that ask you to be smarter. I think that's something really important that HBO has done to change the landscape of TV.