A Quote by Tom Ellis

Pilot season's such a strange time. You get such a concentrated amount of scripts. A lot of them become white noise after a while. When something really pops, it becomes apparent very quickly. I'm quite instinctive about that. I know, normally by about 10 pages in, whether I want to do something or not.
You really get a feeling, when you're reading scripts, pretty quickly. Within 20 or 25 pages, you can get a sense of the part. I always think about whether I'm right for it and whether I can do it. If I don't think I'm right for it, it should go to somebody else.
In a strange way, I don't have a job, so I have a lot of time on my hands. When I do work, it might be very concentrated, and it might be months where you're not really doing anything except maybe playing the banjo or writing something. You know, there's a lot of time in the day if you're not working 9 to 5.
In the theater, when people hear that you're writing a play, they want to know what it's all about, whether there's a role for them. You write it fairly quickly, and it becomes a group activity before you're really ready to have company.
Desire is something very egoistic. If you desire something, you also have to take the consequences of that. You have to study the market and see how it can go. I mean to become an artist... You never get the Nobel-price for example. You can normally never become a millionaire. Very few become millionaires, so the circumstances are very bad if one becomes an artist. And that should be taken into consideration.
It's always a strange moment when you get up on stage because in a way that's really the fulfilment of what you do, but at the same time when you write from a place that's very personal and quite isolated, at least for me, there's something that almost doesn't feel natural about it.
I know something about the civilization of China, with my background, obviously, and I think I know something about American history. But that's about all. And I've traveled all over the world, and for a long time I didn't know very much about it, really.
Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.
With a pilot, there's a lot of information that gets packed into 46 minutes or whatever it is. Usually what happens is that, throughout the season, you get to spend a little more quality time with the characters and get to know them a bit better, whether it's based on circumstance or relationships they've created with other characters.
I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really.
I used to think she was quite intelligent , in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.
I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.
You read a million scripts during pilot season, and most of them are not very good, so the good ones really shine.
I have to get three pages done every day, and there's usually a point about 150 pages in where everything falls apart, where all the plans are for naught. The book has become something else, and I have a nervous breakdown, and then I submit to what the book has become, and I keep going, and that's a terrible and then a great time.
I think there's something strange about writing a script I've written many, many scripts - dozens and dozens of scripts - and every time I start one, I think to myself: 'why in the world do I think I know how to do this?'
I see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary. . . . So long as I've learned something about why.
I know both Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and President [Barack] Obama were very gracious and I respect that a lot in the way they handled it the day after, two days after. But I wish they would says something about it too. Because after all, these are supporters of President Obama and Hillary Clinton and maybe they could say something about this. Really not the right thing in the democracy.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!