The Titanic hit the iceberg not because they could not see it coming but because they could not change direction.
Dean Devlin
I've always lived by this philosophy, when it comes to conspiracies, never to attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence.
In tough times, we all hope for knights in shining armor, or the cavalry, to show up and effect change.
We're going to come back to Oregon, whether it's with another show, or a pilot, or a movie. We love working up there. I think it's got one of the most amazing talent pools of any state in the union.
With 'The Librarians,' we want to be a smart, fun, crazy, genre show, but we also want to be something that people of all ages can watch and enjoy. That, to me, does seem to be increasingly harder to find.
'The Outpost' is an exciting fantasy with a strong female lead that will capture the imagination of fans of both 'Game of Thrones' and 'Wonder Woman.'
I just make the movies I want to see. I've always been that way.
There's a lot of superhero stuff out there and a lot of cop stuff out there. What we have very little of anymore is adventure.
I like to get emotional when I watch my entertainment.
I can tell you as a fact that if you'd asked anyone in Hollywood one year before 'Pirates of the Caribbean' had come out, they'd have told you the pirate movie was a dead genre. And it's not that it's a dead genre. If you make a bad pirate movie, no one will want to see it. If you make a good one, everyone will want to see it.
Had the car companies continued to do generation two, generation three, generation four of the EV-1, we'd be looking at a spectacular car today.
I like to make popcorn movies. It's my passion. I love the genre.
When you convince sci-fi fans you've done something cool, you get them in huge numbers.
I've always said that I don't believe in Santa Claus, but I could make a great movie about him if I set my mind to it.
When I first came to Oregon, the annual amount spent on production was $1 million to $1.5 million. By the time 'Leverage' was done, there had been over $100 million in production that year.
There are an enormous amount of techniques I wanted to beta test in television. You can't take those risks on a $100 million movie.
We have to put people on pedestals; otherwise, there's no one to knock off pedestals.
We make movies that crack us up and hope that they crack up other people, too.
There are three things that I'm addicted to when it comes to entertainment. In no particular order, One, I'm addicted to the cheer moment. 'Librarians' has plenty of them. Next, I feel that life is hard, and I want my entertainment fun, and 'Librarians' is fun as a Christmas party. And third, I like to be moved.
We did the original 'Stargate' as an independent movie. It was a surprise success. Shortly before the movie came out, the financiers who were frightened the movie might not do well sold the film to MGM. When the film came out, it was a hit and spawned TV shows.
Portland is a two-hour flight from L.A. It has wonderful talent, and it hasn't been shot to death. I'm all in favor of it becoming a serious player in the industry.
We don't over-manage projects like the studios do.
Stories about travelers coming into town and doing good have been part of our storytelling since the Bible.
Portland has all the accoutrements of a big city, but the heart and soul of it is a small town, so that creates an intimacy in a large environment.
I love what they do with 'Doctor Who,' where they have the series, and then they do a big Christmas movie special.
John Rogers has an encyclopedic mind. Having John as our showrunner is the gift that keeps on giving. He knows more trivial information than anyone I've ever met in my entire life.
The scale of 'Independence Day' is much more than 'Stargate.'
Kurt Russell is the guy you know. He's not something out of a weight-lifting magazine or a cartoon character. The closest thing to him would have been Steve McQueen.
It's fun to watch a show that you can watch with any member of your family, and you're going to laugh, and you're going to be moved, and you're going to have fun, rather than this dark, brooding, cold, 'purely procedural show.'
The advantage of the Genesis is that it's a rock-solid camera, made by a company with an enormous history and a huge support base. Plus, it's very good in low light using all the Panavision lenses. The downside is that you're recording on tape.
We had an amazing experience shooting the first season of 'Leverage' with such a talented cast and crew and with the full support of TNT behind us.
The days of family entertainment seem to have left us.
In the '80s, all the movies became predictable.
Most young American actors feel like teenagers.
There are amazing behind-the-scenes technicians in Portland who didn't want to raise their families in L.A.
There's a real difference now in what you can get out of film and the rise of digital platforms.
It was somewhere in doing the last season of 'Leverage' that John Rogers and I became confident that we had developed an all-new production technique where we could put more on the screen with very little money. So we started to get more comfortable with the idea of trying to tackle 'The Librarians.'
We're so specialized now in our entertainment. It's nice to do a show where you're really circling back to this idea of, 'Couldn't there be a show the whole family can watch together?'
The real trick to these movies and making the big action sequences work - and I've forgotten this sometimes and screwed it up - the characters really have to be humanized. Because you can have the greatest special effects in the world, but if you don't care about the people in those effects, there's no impact.
Spielberg is our hero. For him to make a nod to 'Godzilla' just before we make our movie is like getting the king to acknowledge you at dinner.
In the '70s, you didn't know who was going to survive in a disaster film.
Television is like speed chess, as you have no time and no money. It is like trying to play Grandmaster chess with a 20 minute timer. The rewards are great, though, as it moves faster and you get to see the finished results much quicker.
The movie business is not something that can come from the brain. It really comes from the soul and the heart.
The budget on cable television is dramatically less than network television.
'Stargate' has always had this empty hole. When we made the first one, we always intended on doing part two and three, and we were prevented for years. And our hope is that we can get another chance at 'Stargate' and tell the entire story we wanted to tell.
The great thing about adventure, when told correctly, is it is one of the few genres that everybody in the family can watch together.
'Independence Day,' ever since we did it, there's been enormous pressure to follow it up.
I know I screwed up my 'Godzilla.'
The truth is, we were sick of, every time we finished a movie, having to start all over again from nothing, going to a studio, pitching an idea, setting up a new office.
There is a renaissance of really great genre entertainment happening. But it's become incredibly audience-specific.
