Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while.
Anything that's on television as often as someone on 'The X Factor' is what's successful. That doesn't mean that I condone that or think that it's right. To be honest, I'd be the first to say I think it's a shame. But if that's the way it is then tha...
Television is kind of a disappointment. I often want to watch it, but I find it quite hard - I don't like soaps, reality TV or celebrity chefs.
You fight for certain roles, and you realise they're being filled by television and film actors, because theatre is constantly fighting for survival and they need names and faces and ticket sales.
It took me nine years to get through the fourth grade. When I got into television commercials, I had to take a crash course in reading. I was 32 years old, and I couldn't read the cue cards.
On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag for the ordinary people who are not quite sure that they are getting it right.
I'm psyched-up when I do radio. I can reach hundreds of thousands of people in a market. And way psyched-up when I'm on television. For people not to take it seriously is foolish.
Burnout comes easy in the high-pressure world of television, and when the opportunity arose to move to Las Vegas and bring my friends and star chefs to open their restaurants at the Venetian, I made the move here.
I try to get away. It's very unusual for me to be in one spot for so many months, which is one of the things I've had to get used to for a television show. I enjoy going on adventures and seeing the planet.
I grew up with the television product being old Western serials like Roy Rogers, and John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and many others were my favorites when I was a young person going to films.
There is a large group that's not represented on television - the group that falls somewhere in the middle of straight and gay. That group is looked down on, because people say, 'You can't be in-between. You have to pick one or the other.'
Once typecast as the indispensable altarpiece of a well-appointed living room, TVs have infected every human environment. The average American household has more television sets than people.
Rookies are also coming in from college programs as big stars, whereas when we came in, we were just happy to be there. We were happy to be playing in a big gym, to be on television, to be playing in America.
On 'America's Next Top Model,' I mentor girls on television. When that TV goes off, I actually mentor other girls in the modeling industry - girls that have not been on 'Top Model,' but who appear in 'Vogue' worldwide.
And I'm auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I'm reading right now for a horror film, and I'm meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.
I go to my physical therapist to keep fighting it and one of them told me if you don't use it, you lose it, but I know we're on television so I won't say what I would often say.
I've never seen radio as the minor leagues, where I'm just really preparing to be in the show that really counts, namely, television, which is, I think, what people often assume. I've never felt that way.
If you are interested in ideas, radio is way more pure than television. You're not distracted by somebody's nose or hair or posture. You can really see how someone thinks and penetrate to the essence of who that person is.
But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.
With me serving as the president, we filed a $3-million lawsuit against the league and its member clubs in an attempt to win increased pension benefits and a larger share Of television revenue.
Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess.
