John Wells Quotes (42 Quotes)

It's certainly a very interesting gray area, we wouldn't have gotten into without John's death. But it makes for some compelling drama on the show.

We've spent the entire year going back and forth on that question and hearing from people, what they thought, people passionate on one side and another, and have only in the last couple of days made that decision. Which we certainly won't share with you because it would be no fun ... but we have passionate advocates for both candidates in the writers' room and in the producing group, and it's been quite the brawl we've had.

As an American a lot of people lack an understanding of their roots. But people want to reestablish that. There's a sense of belonging, camaraderie and socialization. You see the same people at events like this across the country.

He has the potential, he has the attitude and he has the good habits. He's selfless, a keen learner and, though there's some way to go, he's improved immensely.

Brad is multifaceted, he can throw the ball well on any type of pass and can take off and run with it too. He'll be on his game when we play Tech.

In 'Doom,' (you have) a wonderful cinematic venue it's atmospheric and moody and scary. So you know the genre you're in, but you still have to craft a complete story.

I have been impressed by how serious the leadership of this union and this corporation are in trying to find sufficient common ground in trying to reach a signed contract.

This show is going to be missed. It's going to be a long time before there will be a show like this.

Real-world Democrats are most terrified of a George Pataki or Arnold Schwarzenegger as the nominee - a pro-choice moderate Republican who can galvanize the country, ... What we try to do is reflect common ground that most viewers can relate to.

John was so wonderful in the episodes that the best homage we could make to his contribution to the show was to let people see the last days of his work.

So it's actually kind of a gray area. . . . It makes for some very compelling drama on the show.

It's very much a possibility. It's in his court now. He'll have to decide whether his schedule work and be able to come back for it.

We wondered, will it be difficult for the audience to watch all these additional episodes that have him in them He was so wonderful in those episodes we decided it would not be respectful of his work to not air them exactly as they were.

We're dealing with fictional characters, and so it's difficult to convey to the audience the sense of urgency. This is the right thing to do for the cast and the audience and the material.

If you go back and watch the live episode of 'ER' on the Season 4 DVD set,

What was more interesting to us was the notion of someone who had done something that they believed was the proper thing to do, ... Within the White House, do they ultimately take responsibility for what they have done, rather than wait to be indicted

We did take a look, this spring and summer, when reporters started showing up to testify and one went to prison, and we said, 'Wait a second, do we want to keep doing this' ... But we thought the investigation would go all the way to Friday. And we monitored things pretty closely in early September because we didn't want to end up in an awkward situation. We could have moved stories around earlier if we had to.

Infantilism is possibly the hallmark of our generation.

There's certainly no constitutional provision with how to deal with the death of a vice presidential candidate during the electoral cycle.

You telling me no midriffs exposed That's the only clothes they make now.

We are already a young team, and now we face the possibility of losing a junior and senior for our first game in the North. Courtland is a good blocker, runner and brings a lot of experience so we are going to miss him a lot.

John did not have heart troubles. He had some health problems 16 months earlier that were not connected to this. Giving Leo the heart attack was tied in part to the fact he was going to have to be away for 4 12 months recuperating from surgery. He and I talked and we said, 'Let's give him a heart attack.' We were sort of glib about it, and ironically he died of a heart attack.

We had planned out the entire rest of the season, and it didn't end up being what we thought it was going to be. We have been rewriting frantically over the last couple of weeks.

We will be spending time with all the characters that you've cared about ... and talking about where they're going to go and what they're going to do next.

In many ways what they've done is created a world for real presidential debates in which the candidates have an opportunity, to a larger audience, not to engage each other, but to give another version of their stump speech,

That's the same with any team because in those situations (the opposition's) whole play book is at their disposal. Tech has good wideouts as well, and they could burn us.

Because of the Olympics, when we're back on the air in March, the audience will have completely assimilated the shock of his death. So we decided we should just do the best storytelling we can do, which is what John would have wanted.

We got interested in the idea of, what is the responsibility inside the White House for taking individual responsibility for leaking ... How does leaking work Why do people do it

From the beginning, it (the Firestone property) was visualized as the front yard of the library. It was not intended to be there from the beginning.

That was one of Aaron's original concepts. And the peaceful passing of power from one leader to another expresses this strength and makes for wonderful storytelling.

That took care of it for a while but it came back. The city administration says it's the residents' problem I say it's the city's problem.

We have a very, very large Republican audience that loves to kind of watch the show and throw things at the screen.

We're now dealing with the death of a character we loved after having dealt with the death of a person we loved.

The beauty of the material is really what sells the product.

I don't understand it and I have been here 60 years.

It's killing our trees. Some have died and have been taken out. Most of the trees are infected. We have 20 or 30 years' growth in those trees. It will take about that long to get the growth back.

The series has celebrated from the beginning in (creatorformer executive producer) Aaron (Sorkin)'s conception, the remarkable strength of American democracy. And one of the things that's most dramatic about American democracy is the peaceful passing of p

We spent a lot of time during the Christmas holidays trying to figure out what we were going to do. We had conversations about whether it was even appropriate to continue to do the show without John. He was such a central part of the ensemble and of our lives together as a group.

It's been interesting and difficult. He was a close friend, an extraordinary man and a wonderful person. Trying to talk about and think about dealing with a fictional character's death and at the same time knowing the reason you're doing it is because a close friend of yours has died is really difficult.

John was a wonderful actor, a pleasure to work with and a true gentleman, but most importantly, a generous and gracious friend. He will be missed by everyone who ever had the great fortune to know him.

John's passing happened at a point where we had thought we had made a decision in how to go, and it affected it in the sense that it changed a lot of the storytelling.

That's our business advantage right there. The scale of the trees that we get is what determines their value - the scale and the quality of the grain of the wood.