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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.

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.

What's great about HBO is they just care about quality. They care about the brand. They're not worried about ratings; obviously they want people to buy subscriptions, but they just want people to be into what's on HBO.

I think HBO seems to have an extraordinary clever knack of catching the pulse of its audience. It really, really knows its audience.

I forget sometimes that I'm in the HBO stable because I am such a fan of so much of their programming. Like, 'The Wire' is my favorite TV show of all time.

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

HBO is really famous for hiring good people and staying out of their way until they ask for help, or need it. And that reputation is earned.

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.

At HBO, they seem to be well-informed. They make what I think are really quite mature films.

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.