Quotes About Television

The script that I fell in love with and adored was 'Jane the Virgin'... but every line in the pilot was essentially, 'Why did you keep my daughter a secret all of these years?' I didn't know any direction my character was going - was it going to be a dramatic character, a comedic character? - I didn't know.

I'm going to go do a Netflix series. It's straight-to-series, 10 episodes, probably go for three seasons. I'm going to direct the pilot and hopefully the last episode of the first season. The show is 'Seven Seconds.'

I've pitched many things that have not gone, but every year, I'm in that pilot game like a lot of other writers in Hollywood.

Sometimes you can see a pilot, and then when the series starts, it's different people. That's always possible.

What the hell is pilot season? It's an artificial boundary that makes no sense, and it makes you do things under duress.

Nobody knew if the pilot would even get picked up because it had two gay lead characters, which has never happened before. And now every show has at least two gay characters, if not many more.

Pilot season isn't perfect, and it certainly is a very difficult time. But pilot season does work for us.

I saw the pilot, you know, because you have to have some knowledge of the piece that you are in, but I never saw an episode of 'Lost.'

If you go back and look at the pilot of 'Seinfeld,' no one would have thought that show would be what it became, and television isn't given that kind of chance anymore.

I always knew how to cook and at one point in my career where I had done nine television pilots before Three's Company and they all failed, I just got discouraged.

Most of the pilots I choose do not have high-concept ideas, so for me it's not the idea as much as the execution of the idea, and if the idea, like you take a bar in Boston, that's not a high-concept idea. But if it's executed well, it makes a great show.

I feel like network didn't want me. I was doing all these pilots, and it never worked out. I was like, network doesn't like me. I'm going to go to cable where I'm appreciated. Then it was funny; I think I had to go to cable for network to appreciate me.

I did a couple of pilots that didn't sell, a few movies, and one year of nightclub work, which I hated. Then I did the pilot of 'The Brady Bunch' and never had to do another nightclub.

I've written several pilots that haven't gone, so that's why you haven't seen any.

I've done, like, eight pilots, and every time, everyone thinks it's going to go for 10 years.

We shoot a lot of pilots that don't get picked up, and no one ever sees them at all.

Do you know there were two pilots made for 'Have I Got News For You' before the series started two decades ago: one hosted by Angus Deayton and one hosted by me. But I was told that they couldn't have a woman in charge of the news.

I've read many great samples, both of existing shows I liked and original pilots, and definitely hired the writers - or, at least, tried to!

You read so many scripts, especially pilots, that really feel like marbles in your mouth when you go to read them out loud.

We've always dreamt of doing TV and movies and we shot two pilots for TV networks, but neither one went to series.

The first Chanel jacket that I saw - that I knew was Chanel - was on TV. It was on Mrs. Kennedy - the pink one.

There is this perception that TV is glamorous and it is the pinnacle of your existence - I don't think it is.

I work hard not to be pigeonholed. And I can't understand how you can work on jobs back-to-back all year, with cameras in your face, contestants to look after and someone screaming in your ear, and still expect to remember the price of a pint of milk.

I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.