Even though the vast majority of my work was outside television, the amount of creation and inventing that went into the TV shows was non stop and, unknown to me, a great strain.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
TV kind of worked out naturally for me. I was fortunate to do a show like 'Breaking Bad' and then go straight into something like 'Friday Night Lights.' It's not something I focus on, but when they're great projects, I can't pass them up.
During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people's creations.
My job was to find interesting material that would give us a quality television show.
I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
I started working in the mid-to-late Seventies, when television was not what it is now.
I think in my job, it's quite difficult to find work on television... you don't necessarily want to get a profile for something that you don't fully believe in.
I don't think any industry was ever as closely scrutinized and written about and constantly in the public eye as television.
Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.
I think that every time you bring a subject into the mainstream landscape of television, it can have a huge impact. Television is such an influential medium.
It's interesting: I went 25 years without watching a single television show. I was one of those people, because I was so inside how a television show was made, if I would turn on somebody else's show, I would sit there and analyze it, like, 'Oh, so they had four hours in this location and had to get out and the number of set-ups, etc.'