The reality of television production now is that all the development money and pilot money now goes to the Internet so they can try to get pilots cheaper, than if they were producing them for television. I understand, it's a business, but what's great about doing it on the web, and one thing that attracted me is the amount of creative freedom that you do get with the web. That's the only advantage of there not being a lot of money involved, is that you're really able to write and do what you want... because there's not a lot of money involved and not money at risk.
To me there's a difference between success and satisfaction. A lot of people have success and no satisfaction. I'm after satisfaction. I
I need creative satisfaction and only then I can move in as a director.
I've said jokes where I thought people might get up and hit me for this. A couple of people have thought about it. But they didn't. It gives you a lot of power, because if you're on shows where people are worried about getting sacked and you're not, then you're transcendent because you say what other people would like to say.
It makes sense that it's so different from film and television, because it's so in-depth. As actors, when we're in film or television, we can have transcendent moments and we get to work with really creative and incredible people, but it's such a small percentage of your time that's about your process.
President Carter famously said the hostages were the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night. It was a downright foolish thing to say, because it made the people holding the hostages realize that they had an awful lot of influence over the United States.
I'm the perfect amount of guarded. I don't reveal too much, and I never reveal who the songs are about. They are real life. People get that. I date a lot of musicians and they do the same thing. People that work with me - who I write about too - they get it. It's my creative outlet, my therapy.
There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.
For me, becoming the best you can be in something that you love, like rowing, is incredibly challenging, and what you learn about yourself, the sense of satisfaction as you get older and move on, you'll never forget that. It's huge.
I go anywhere I want, do whatever I want when I get there, they let me make self-indulgent TV about that experience, and give me about as much creative freedom as anyone's ever had in the history of television.
I feel like more than 80% of the world wouldn't get up in front of 40 million people and dance on national television, and if I have the confidence to do that then that's a step ahead in my life for me in terms of personal goals. I will gain a lot of confidence on all aspects right there.
I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
When people ask me, 'Are you happy?' I respond with, 'You've asked the wrong question.' There is a deep kind of satisfaction you get from building a company. This kind of satisfaction transcends happy, sad, hard, or easy. I seek satisfaction. I want to be positively disruptive.
So even when I am not around for many, many generations, I will continue to motivate a lot of people... Wherever my soul would be, it will give me a lot of satisfaction that people will be talking about me and following me in their life.
I'm creative in my own life. I'm creative when I step out the door. I'm creative when I pick up a glass. Do you know what I mean? I'm one of those dreadful people who probably should have been born at the end of the 19th century and been in cafe society. That would have suited me fine.
For a while, I couldn't get arrested in television because everybody thought of me as that guy on 'Trapper John.' So I thought, 'Great, I'll come out here to New York and do some theater, and when they get tired of me, I'll do something else.'