Once you put something like 'The A-Team' on the map, it does become part of the DNA of television. People grab little pieces of it. I certainly grabbed little pieces of other people's shows when I was creating my shows.
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
My whole reason for creating a network is literally to bring little pieces of light. It's to continue to spread little pieces of light in the world, to illuminate the possibility of the human spirit.
Ever since I was a little kid, whenever my parents would have company over, I would put on shows, whether they would be magic shows, singing shows, dancing shows, little skits.
I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best . . . once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture.
Love is like a teacup that every day falls to the ground and breaks to pieces. In the morning the pieces are gathered and with a little moisture and a little warmth, the pieces are glued together, and again there is a little teacup. He who is in love spends life fearing that the terrible day will come when the teacup is so broken that it can no longer mended.
The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy. I don't know how to do the other, so I won't consider television until the audience's taste changes.
I'll just say that there are times when TV shows, like 'The Honeymooners' or 'I Love Lucy' or something, where they're totally in their stride, and this thing happens, where you can tell they got everything they wanted. And it starts to look a little relaxed. No criticism to the shows whatsoever; these people are geniuses.
One of the differences between real documentaries and reality television, besides the artificial construct of reality television, is that the people who are recruited to be on those shows, and the people who are interested in going on those shows, basically want to be famous. Or maybe they can win a million dollars or something.
With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know.
You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought--put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.
History shows the power-grab in every religion once it gets organised. And then it's people making you do things that you don't agree with and setting the rules. But it does mean something to me to believe that we are not alone - the human animal is quite a scary thing, left on its own.
Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.
All of my characters tend to be montages of different people I've met: little bits and pieces of their personalities put together.
I did not survive everything. No one ever does. Little pieces of you - sometimes the best of you - get lost in a little lie here, a little joke there. And of course, the aftereffect is the tiny sob - unseen, unheard, deeply felt.
I've always loved playing live shows. I love traveling, seeing the country. I've made a lot of lifelong friends on the road at shows. It's so neat to see that so many of our fans have become friends. There are these nice little groups of "X People" everywhere.