Any press is good press.
Marti Noxon
The problem with generalizations and judgments, the words we hurl as insults, is that they deny our humanity and our stories.
Keanu has such generosity and intelligence, not to mention a warmth that I'm eager to tap into. We're all incredibly excited that he's agreed to help us bring 'To the Bone' to life.
Around 10, I got chubby. I knew I'd crossed a line when the only pants that fit were from the 'Junior Plenty' line at JC Penny. My parents had split up, my mom was going through a dark time, and my brother and I were getting bullied in our new neighborhood. Life was big and unsafe.
Test audiences are notorious for getting kind of itchy when people talk too much, and you have to trust your instincts that they don't necessarily understand that you're not digesting the movie on a scene-by-scene basis.
Ever since I worked on 'Buffy', it's always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, 'Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It's gone to YA.'
When you work in television, it's an isolating experience. You rarely ever get to watch it with an audience.
I was raised by a lesbian feminist who told me that shaving my legs was giving into the patriarchy. So, I consider myself to be a bona fide feminist.
The great thing about the story of 'Twilight', or the story of 'I Am Number Four' is that you get to deal with real issues of identity and what people are going through and the choice of who you're going to be, but it's all large.
There's this idea that Hollywood sells over and over again: 'If I just looked more like this, I'd be accepted.'
When every word is parsed for ill intention, regardless of who is speaking or why, we become so afraid we'll offend that we stop trying to communicate with people we don't understand.
I'm a huge fan of Kathryn Bigelow's 'Near Dark.'
Can't write worrying what the Internet's going to think.
I always joke that I'm a feminist with a boob job.
The bane of every TV writer's existence is the likability note.
If there's a theme to where I'm at in my life, it's that 'warts and all' is actually my superpower. Just like you, I'm messed up and I'm capable. I'm this and that.
You really can't quantify what 'Dietland' is.
The thing that can happen in a TV room is you can get 'teamthink': you can all go down a crazy path together.
I've watched my fair share of 'Housewives.' And I just felt a little dirty afterwards.
With everything I do, I strive for a balance of tone, where it's not just one thing.
I bemoaned the pending loss of Obamacare/the Affordable Care Act.
Being the director - way fancier than 'just' being the writer. People call you 'talent.'
I'll be honest: I had a real deep-seated fear that 'Buffy' was going to be my peak. It was such a beautiful experience. It was such a fully realized show.
I've never had as much success as when I say to myself, 'I get that. I know what the feelings that that character would be going through would be like. I can feel a through line from beginning to end.'
It's so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them 'un-gay' again. Like, once you become gay, you've crossed over, or you're not allowed to be a person who doesn't want to be defined by a label like that.
I can't be interesting, controversial, and the writer I'd like to be if I need everybody to like me and think I'm doing the right thing, because those two things, in my experience, never go hand in hand.
A great thing, which I don't do enough, is to take a break from producing and try to just take stuff in, like go to the theater.
Of all the mental illnesses, anorexia has the highest morbidity rate. It's serious.
Sometimes I say working on a story in a writers' room is like saying the same word over and over and over again until it doesn't make sense anymore. Like, you say it until you don't know what you're saying.
It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.
We did have 'The Bronze', a very active website on 'Buffy' where we got a lot of feedback and post-game discussion. But now it's important to be engaged in the discussion while the show is airing and right after.
I think there's a good-er divorce. I think that's absolutely possible. There's a better way to do it and everything in between, and then, of course, there's the disastrous way to do it.
I'm a big believer in 'Trojan horses' - There are certain themes that are more palatable when wrapped in something fun or distracting.
I think the science around mental illness is always evolving. There's always new kinds of thinking.
I think women can relate to the feeling that we're internalizing too many demands, and we're trying to be good at everything, but one day, we're going to snap.
I really understand that we have to be sensitive to people's feelings and to their sensitivities, but you also can't be muzzled to tell a story.
I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.
It's humiliating, being told you're not responsible enough to make your own choices in life.
When I was going to get ready to take 'Dietland' up, I have to say I was surprised to find that I felt like maybe we wouldn't find a home for it because it's unlike anything else that I've done.
You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.
You should live hoping you are going to offend people, because then you're doing something.
It all starts with a very solid, well-executed script, where the story is very clear and everybody is rowing in the same direction. That's always good; that's a constant.
In 'UnREAL', for me, just being so openly feminist, just being so overtly, like, 'This show is about women who are not necessarily likable, doing a job that is despicable, and we are not going to be afraid of that.'
A show can be completely dead before you even get on the air. I've been privy to a couple of those.
I've been looking for a versatile and writer-driven home that could help me bring more complex, exciting, and potentially murderous characters to television - and the team at Skydance is the ideal partner for that.
I'm so excited to be part of the environment that David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross have built at Skydance.
The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.
My dad had made a documentary called 'The Dream Factory' about MGM, and my whole life, I just wanted to be inside it. And there I was.
If you made a movie of 'Sharp Objects,' chances are that it would be a smaller film, but as a TV show, it can reach a lot of people.
I encourage people and their different points of view.
