At the end of the day, it's really, really difficult to make a brand-new show, to write a pilot where you have to introduce characters and everyone has to kind of be dynamic and have something different for themselves.
I never intended to become a professional pilot. But, as I became more curious about aircraft, and, well, not being John Travolta, I realized that the only way I was ever going to fly a jet is if I got a job.
I've learned through experience that you can't ever predict what's going to happen with any show. When I signed on to 'Ugly Betty,' I just prayed that I wouldn't get fired after the pilot, and four years later, I was still doing it.
Brimstone was great. That was another occasion when they called me in to do the pilot and it turned into a regular job, which made me quite happy. It was another really good experience and we were all so surprised when they pulled the plug on it.
My very first job was something called 'Nobody's Watching,' that Bill Lawrence who created 'Scrubs,' it was his pilot. It was my very first TV job, and it was a sitcom. Ever since that experience, I've been so itching to get back to that kind of envi...
I was cast as the lead in a Warner Bros TV pilot and was immediately told I needed to lose weight. I got a bit weird about food for the first time in my life, and I thought, 'You know, this just isn't the life for me.'
My business partner gave me a drone, a small helicopter you pilot with an iPhone, and also it has a camera so you can see what it sees on the iPhone. Great fun. I fly it outside in Portugal. It's wonderful to oversee gardens.
In full accordance with the law - and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives - the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qa'ida terrorists, sometimes using remotely pilot...
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 ...
It's great if a pilot starts off great and if it doesn't start off so great it's not that big a deal: everybody's baby is born ugly. But you want to know, if given the opportunity: Where are we going? What's the story we're trying to tell?
I've had a pilot every single year that didn't sell for the past four years, that'll smack you in the back of the head. I had a really good one last year; I wouldn't have done the play in New York if I had gotten that one.
Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.
I get really sad when people say, 'I'm no good. I haven't been cast in a pilot.' It doesn't mean you're not good; it just means someone hasn't seen you yet. It doesn't mean that in real life you're not the greatest actor.
The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alliga...
Coming in and out of Hollywood for pilot season, I may have to thicken my accent or hear that, physically, I'm not Latino. I not only am, but there's another 50,000 people who look exactly like me.
I feel very confident that Americans flying in the air are safe and that only under the most dire of circumstances would our pilots ever even request permission to do that.
I have long been a proponent of a guest-worker program between the United States and Mexico, and in particular I have proposed that Arizona would be an ideal location for a pilot project.
I remember when I did the pilot, and I though no network is going to want to do this. How could that happen? A half Chinese guy walking the old west that doesn't fire one gun and never gets on a horse?
Before we shot the pilot, I knew what 'Dallas' was, but I actually was too young to remember the details of the show. I didn't have my hands on the DVDs, so I YouTubed everything I could of J.R.
I think a lot of actors, we underprepare emotionally for how intense pilot season can be. And we underprepare the people around us, our support system. So when it starts taking up more time than you expect it to, we feel guilty.
With a pilot, there's a lot of information that gets packed into 46 minutes or whatever it is. Usually what happens is that, throughout the season, you get to spend a little more quality time with the characters and get to know them a bit better, whe...
