Even when people are rich and successful on TV shows, there's always some trouble - you have to poke holes in them, throw them out of a job, put a pie in the face.
For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.
I was about 26 or 27 and it was imperative that I make a living right away and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.
Television is becoming a collage - there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.
I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.
All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.
The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment.
The general view is that actors start on soaps and then maybe graduate to prime-time television or film; normally you don't see a film actor going to do a soap.
I got into television because I hated it so. I thought, there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.
If you come up to me in the street, I am going to be delighted to meet you. I became a television star to entertain people, to spread goodness into the world.
Coming off of 'Book of Mormon,' I had a lot of opportunities. I didn't want to do TV, actually. I really wanted to get paid nothing and keep doing theater at all costs.
There was a little afternoon show that was called Afternoon. Back in those days in television, most local stations had a midday show for housewives that had a series of things. It was like a variety show for midday.
When The Muppet Show ended, we all sat around and said, what kind of television show would we like to do. We felt the need these days are for some quality children's programming.
How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.
The one thing the blues don't get is the backing and pushing of TV and radio like a lot of this garbage you hears. They choke stuff down people's throat so they got no choice but to listen to it.
I don't actually go to a lot of games because I think football on TV is better. Even though I'm pretty busy, I watch 90 percent of Ohio State's games.
Politics is there the way men and women are there, the way the Atlantic Ocean is there. Sometimes I've written about politics specifically, I mean about politics as it's understood on television and in newspapers.
I don't have role models or watch much TV. I go to awards ceremonies but often I don't even know who the people are. I think that's good, because then you don't have preconceived ideas about them.
When I started out in comedy, it was common knowledge that it took about 10 years to get good. And that was okay because it took you about 9 years to get on television.
