It's much, much harder working on a show than it is working on a movie. It really is. Even if you're in production, that production lasts for a set period of time. A TV show goes on for months and months and months.
Being a father is like directing Alien or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's much more difficult than directing an episode of TV. Also, directing a show or movie lasts a few months at most, parenting lasts for decades.
Reality TV is hard. You put yourself out there and you have no control over which parts they show (and don't show). And you are shooting sometimes 15 hour-days for months and months. It's exhausting - physically and mentally.
Sometimes doing a movie for a short period of time is better than committing eight months to a television show.
When you are not working in TV and primarily doing film, you're working with one director for a long period of time, so getting to work with 12 different directors in the span of six months is incredible.
I like working consistently. I like working for four months at a time, which is why cable was so attractive. You work for four months, and then you get to do something else, whether it's doing a movie or just being at home with your husband and eventually having a family.
And so not only do you have to make that work, you can't really start putting the thing together in any form because some of the shots are very short and obviously many of them take so long, you're waiting months and months and months before you can see if it's going to be working emotionally.
When you go into pre-production on a movie, you can spend weeks and even months working on the nuances of the animatronics on the bear head. If we were to write a sketch about an animatronic bear on 'SNL,' we'd have to come up with every aspect of the suit within 24 hours.
Marvel is very secretive, so there was no script. About six months before production, they gave me some pages and it was from a cop movie. And then, six months later, I got a phone call saying, "Do you want to come do this?" [iron Man]
The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.
Everything has been for the [President] election for the last couple of months. Since the Democratic National Convention, it's been a dead run to get out as much content as possible and do as much as possible. Then, I go back to writing the screenplay I was working on, which is an original piece - a period piece that I will hopefully finish a couple of months after that, and hopefully I can convince some unsuspecting fool studio to buy.
When you rehearse a Broadway show, you get two months of rehearsal, while in TV, it's a much shorter process.
Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.
I'm doing stand-up comedy. I'm working on a one-woman show about how I don't like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it's the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrowing.
Studio films are really fun. You have months and months to shoot. With the smaller films you get to be on a much more intimate set and have to get things done quickly.
My temperament is not the adventuresome sort that enjoys starting new projects every six months. I love ensemble, nine-to-five stability. There's a family dynamic in making a television show that you don't get on a movie, where you're a hired gun for a few months.
Before I had kids I'd go out on the road for months and months at a time, but now I don't think I'd want to do that anymore, because I'd miss too much time at home, so it's just a matter of monitoring how much work that I do and how much time I'm on the road.