I guess my husband is a muse as well.
I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.
I've worked in network and cable on and off for a number of years, and you just understand what your parameters are. A lot of times, I think the best work that my team has come up with comes from having to deal with certain boundaries.
In order to appeal to a wider audience on network in order to survive, generally your characters need to be, at a base level, a little bit more likable.
One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they're going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.
Cheers was one of the first shows where I paid attention to the writers because their [work] was better than everything else I was watching. The writers weren't afraid to let a joke fall slightly flat if it advanced the characters.
Obviously there are different standards and practices that are allowed on cable versus network. You just have to embrace what your network is going to allow.
Truth comes when your mind and heart are purged of all sense of striving and you are no longer trying to become somebody; it is there when the mind is very quiet, listening timelessly to everything.
I miss my kids sometimes and that can get me down when I've been away working, but then I wake up and recognize how incredibly lucky I am. Spending time being down is less time out there achieving and enjoying.
For 'Rocky II,' I got a torn pectoral muscle, I got all beat up inside, I had to have an operation to splice things back together.
The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy.