Marty McFly, Jr.: [to the TV] Art off. OK, I want channels 18, 24, 63, 109, 87 and the weather channel.
The truth is, I initially became a singer-songwriter while still in my teens because it was the only way to guarantee that somebody on earth would sing the songs I was writing. Since then, I've performed just about everywhere: rock clubs, concerts ha...
Often in films, you have no idea where you're going to be six months from now. And I grew very weary of that. And television, although it wasn't necessarily as creatively diverse as filmmaking can be, it was the lifestyle choice that I needed to make...
If in 1989 I said, 'I have an idea: Bottle water and sell it. And charge more than a beer,' they would have chased me around with a giant butterfly net. The same with paying to watch a television station.
I did television a lot in my earlier years, so to do the high school student that's just the pretty girl, I've done that before, so I don't have any interest in that.
The one guiding principle over my 23-year career in TV has been as long as I'm having fun, I really don't care what the job title is.
As I got older, I never considered that tons of people were watching me on television every week. I give a nod to my parents for keeping me as normal as I could be in an un-normal adult world.
Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn't always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.
I still play that guitar. It's a Martin D-18 with a clear pick guard. I've played that guitar on and off my TV shows for nearly 50 years.
While all the other kids were out playing ball and stuff, I used to stay in my room and imagine that there was a camera in the wall. And I used to really believe that I was putting on a television show and that it was going out to somewhere in the wo...
After making a movie, maybe you weren't able to shoot many of your ideas, because a movie is only 1 1/2 or two hours long, but TV gives you space to film a lot of things.
I enjoy load shedding in Nepal, when it allows me to witness the dancing of fireflies in the next field, and at the same time to hear children playing a chanting clapping game because there is no TV to waste their time on.
British audiences tend to want to see their own lives reflected on TV, whereas American audiences are quite aspirational and enjoy high-concept shows that show them lives that are perhaps slightly more exciting than they aspire to.
For a while, people couldn't understand why I'd find them so fascinating, but I'd rather go to a trial than to a Broadway play. Now that we have Court TV, they see what I mean.
I have two or three shows that I follow, and even those are few and far, when I can see them on Netflix. I don't really watch anything on TV. It's not really a priority for me.
But it's true, when you see some television, you carry it with you. It's like 90210. Tell me what young shows were being done then... We were thrilled about the ratings around the world.
I enjoyed acting growing up; I did musical theater. I had a secret desire to be a television and movie actress, but it wasn't something I admitted to myself that I wanted to do, I guess.
I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.
I was in the tennis bubble. I wasn't thinking about the big picture. I didn't notice what they said on television, I wasn't reading any papers. I had a coach and a manager, and they kept me in the bubble.
I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.
It used to be that people would watch TV shows because they knew the characters would stay the same. Whether it's Archie Bunker or it's Thomas Magnum you watch it because it's like, 'I'm comfortable, this is the same guy.'
