Local television is a slightly different story. It is under much more pressure in the same way that all local businesses are, whether that's a local newspaper, local radio or local television. But I think television in the aggregate is actually in very good shape.
Sadly, anarchy has gotten such a bad name. We don't really see much evidence of it because people associate it with reckless abandon.
Japan is very much a TV-centered entertainment industry. So, when you talk about big stars in Japan, generally they are people who are on television. I work mostly in movies.
The cable package continues to be the greatest value in the history of entertainment. The average hour watched on cable television costs between 15 and 25 cents. For most people who cannot afford other kinds of entertainment, it is their entertainment.
I was very much an only child who was raised by the television and movies, and I grew up in New York. We weren't, like, rich people, but we were middle-class people and my parents supported this love I had for entertainment.
That crossover of whether it's entertainment or news is the biggest crock of b.s. in television today, because it's all entertainment.
I do try not to dwell on the past too much, because I have a tendency to do that, and as I've gotten older, I've gotten very good at distancing myself from shoulda, woulda, coulda.
I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.
I hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That's much better than watching television, much better. They won't get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.
So I definitely think I've gotten much, much, much better at partying and having fun the older I've gotten.
The thing that people associate with expertise, authoritativeness, kind of with a capital 'A,' don't correlate very well with who's actually good at making predictions.
I've never really been a television watcher and watched comedies, and I have gotten a number of invitations to be on television as the dad.
The future of television is not on television but online. A majority of us are turning to our computers and mobile devices for news and entertainment, Millennials especially.
I'm actually a big fan of having all the different types of voices on television. I think it gives people a nice little buffet that they can just pick and choose how they want to get their news and entertainment, I guess.
Trust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
Filmmaking is essentially about entertainment, but it's amazing to realize that it has this other muscle that could actually help. Do you know what I mean? People permit entertainment to wash over them, but every once and a while, entertainment - and this is entertaining - also galvanizes something else and that would be a really good thing to have happen in this case.