Steven Bochco Quotes (18 Quotes)

We sort of shut the company down for three or four weeks so that, as a writing group, we could take a deep breath and have a little time to think and plan and get some new material working so that when we came back into production, we could come back into a much more normalized kind of production schedule, which I think we did. And I think the scripts are really good. So given the givens, I think it was as good of a transition as you could have hoped for.

Imagery is like music.

Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

Tuesday night is arguably the most competitive night on television and on the schedule. And Tuesday at 9 o'clock (EST), if you've noticed, is a very, very difficult time slot under the best of circumstances.

Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

Hill Street Blues gave me an opportunity to work with an ensemble cast of people whose work I admired.

When your ass is on the block, politics is a luxury.

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

I'm very respectful of the distressing imagery that a show like this, or even NYPD Blue, is capable of evoking in people.

Bob has a terrific metabolism for that job, ... He may not have been the exciting choice, given all of the drama that surrounded the whole issue of succession. But I think he is absolutely the right choice. He knows that company inside and out.

I really wanted an opportunity to work with him again, and he was enthusiastic about the idea,

Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

I think the best work flows out of a collaborative environment.

Every day, there are thousands of crimes all over America -- assaults, rapes, molestations, kidnappings, murders -- creating legions of victims and families of victims. But nobody would ever say you shouldn't do a show on the ongoing urban war on crime.

Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.