A Quote by Sam Esmail

I love voiceover. I never understood this idea that it was lazy. Well, yes, there are those movies or TV shows that use it as just a way to get out exposition. But you know what? That's just bad writing.
I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.
TV shows are great right now in America. I find myself - and I hate to admit it - but we watch more TV than we go to the movies. As a creative person, you want to be creative, you know? You don't want to constantly wait around - a lot of movies fall apart, or there's just not as much out there as there used to be. Or there are more actors. I don't know. But movie stars are doing TV. And when they're asked about it, they say they love it. Dustin Hoffman, Glenn Close. So it can't be that bad.
The whole purpose of screenwriting is to convey everything through action and dialogue and not explanation and exposition. To me, there are movies where voiceover works really well because it does something more than exposition; it actually becomes a tonal element of the movie.
Many TV shows will create characters where you get a sense of who they are, but they're just the bad guy out to find you and you don't know why because there's no tone or dimension there.
There are terrific TV shows now. This is a golden age for TV humor, I think. There's an actual market there. Of course, I have no idea how you'd break in, but there must be a way. They have all these shows and they need jokes and somebody is writing them.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
I just never really understood the reason I understood movies so well, and I didn't realize that me being such a people-watcher was even a gift at all.
I had never wanted to be one of those girls in love with boys who would not have me. Unrequited love - plain desperate aboveboard boy-chasing - turned you into a salesperson, and what you were selling was something he didn't want, couldn't use, would never miss. Unrequited love was deciding to be useless, and I could never abide uselessness. Neither could James. He understood. In such situations, you do one of two things - you either walk away and deny yourself, or you do sneaky things to get what you need. You attend weddings, you go for walks. You say, yes. Yes, you're my best friend, too.
For me, Facebook and Twitter was always just a way for me to reach out to the fans of the show, to communicate with my friends who where in the business, and I never felt like I wanted to use it to further my career in some way. I don't know that it has the power or the ability to do that. I just never thought about it in those terms.
I watch a lot of bad TV. I spend my entire day reading and writing, and after dinner my idea of fun is just to watch a lot of bad TV. That's how I relax and stay in touch with modern culture.
The funniest thing is when somebody says "Look I've no idea who you are but my friend said you are on a show and I just wanted to introduce myself" you know that they are lying! Those people can just get out of my way.
We just haven't found Bigfoot because the world is big. And the woods are deep. The more TV shows that we can get where people go out looking for Bigfoot, the better our chances are. So let's get more of those shows going.
We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.
In the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that what you are seeing is repeatable.
Sirkian films really aren't - at least the way I see them, they're not about identification. They don't have voiceover. A lot of the love stories that are rooted, classic love stories rooted in point of view, use voiceover as a mechanism for locating you there.
I do think there's probably a little more opportunity to direct in television, because there are just so many TV shows. In movies, it still feels harder to break in. I do hope that's shifting. The difference between TV and miniseries and movies is also diminishing.
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