A Quote by Terence Winter
I look at the feature films that come out, and by and large, 85 percent of them are things I wouldn't in a million years sit down and watch. The more interesting storytelling is happening on television by a long shot.
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I think I entered the market around the time when there was getting to be less snobbery about the difference between feature films and television. I think there's been a lot more receptivity on television to interesting adult stories that in the '60s and '70s would have been made into feature films. I have no problem jumping back and forth. If anything, I find it less restrictive working in television.
I'm seeing more and more interesting horror come my way. More and more interesting thrillers and genre films are coming my way from the studio level, and they're financed and they have movie stars attached and all of that. But a lot of times, the storytelling just doesn't speak to me. It feels like it's still oftentimes coming out of a kind of prescribed notion of normalcy, prescribed notion of gender roles. There's not a lot of "new" seeming to be happening.
I think television has become such an interesting place for characters and for incredible storytelling. Half of what I watch are television shows that I've become obsessed with. I just think that it's opened up so much, to be such an interesting and creative medium, and so many wonderful directors and actors are moving to television because it is a great medium for telling stories and for creating a character over a long period of time.
For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.
It was interesting to write ad films and scripts for TV shows before I moved on to writing a feature film. That helped me grow as a writer, and I also found out how long I could sit in front of a computer and see something through.
Coming from a large immigrant family, my parents didn't encourage a lot of 'play' when I was growing up. It was hard to get my Dad to even sit down to watch television with us (he'd watch it standing up, always ready to go do something more productive). Downtime was discouraged, as was any college degree that wasn't law, medicine or business.
Some day we're gonna have interactive television where you can pick the shot that you want. You can watch defense, or you can watch the end-zone shot, or you can watch an isolated shot of Terance Mathis or whoever you want to. Because right now, the only thing that you watch is what the producer or director decides to show you.
Television is an excellent training ground for a director. If you work consistently in television, as I did, you have to come in on time and on budget. What you are allowed in feature films are, fortunately, more time and a larger budget.
And I don't mean that the storytelling that's out there shouldn't be happening. I just feel like that there's this huge imbalance with it all. Where are the shows that allow the entire family to sit down and enjoy something together?
I think the idea that television has evolved to this place of real thematic richness and the fact that you no longer have to get 10 million people to watch your show in order to propagate its survival are the best things that have ever happened to storytelling in this medium.
In India, we always look at feature films as a progression over short films. But, abroad, people make a living making short films. The revenue might not be as much as in feature films, but the return on investment is good.
I will only do family-friendly films or television. They don't have to necessarily be Christian films, but I want to be in things that I'm comfortable having my children and husband watch. They come first in my life, not the film industry.
Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me.
I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.
We want to do things that are interesting, great storytelling, some of it is gonna be more fun and funny, some of it is more serious and talking about interesting issues that we think are provocative and interesting to us. Kind of on a more political level. But, you know, just things that we find interesting that we think stories that need to be told.
Sometimes something will come along, and it feels easy and sometimes you'll get 85 percent there on a song and the last 15 percent will elude you for three years.
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