I think you always want to have a project where it’s not about you: where you’re serving it. Where it has needs, and you’re trying to meet those needs, so you’re trying to lift it out of you and put it out there and then say to people, ‘Hey, I think that’s it; let’s head that way.’ James L. Brooks Read Quote
The remarkable thing about 9/11 was that journalism pretty much put down its badges. People didn’t worry about reacting as human beings. People who weren’t reporters reported. David Letterman was sort of a brilliant reporter for a second – but it was a way nobody had ever covered a story. They just presented what was inside themselves. James L. Brooks Read Quote
When I wrote a gay character, I spent six months asking questions I’ve never asked a gay friend, the questions you don’t ask just because you don’t have the right to do it. James L. Brooks Read Quote
Fargo,’ man, with so many actors playing so many great characters, and then they do another season, and it changes all over again? It’s wild. James L. Brooks Read Quote
If you write about a process you’re about to go through, market research, and you go through it, and it doesn’t echo what you’ve written about, you’ve failed. James L. Brooks Read Quote
I could see no position to say, ‘I’m going to make a living as a writer.’ But I went to classes for it; I read every play in ‘Theater’ magazine. I saw the second acts of everything on Broadway – I had a job as a CBS usher in New York City, and on my way home every night, I’d see what shows I could get into. James L. Brooks Read Quote
I came to 20th Century Fox to do movies, and then they started a network, and they asked me to do a show as part of their starting what became the Fox network. James L. Brooks Read Quote