Robert Thompson Quotations

When you've won an Oscar, everyone is really scrutinizing what you do, including every movie you do. So if it's bad, they're noticing it more.

We're so awash in tongue-in-cheek-attitude, ... it may get to a point when it burns itself out.

There are some people for whom it will always be too soon, but that doesn't mean we have to reduce ourselves to silence.

The coverage we saw on September 11, and in that first week of Katrina, not only won't make this stuff go away, it ups the ante. You don't want to just see the Hollywood sign fall, you want the Statue of Liberty along with it.

There is certainly some award-show fatigue. I lost count a few years ago of all of them.

There are two revolutions taking place. One revolution is taking place in the living room with high definition, bigger and wider screens. The second revolution is portable television.

So many of these reality shows sound so egregious on paper. The automatic response when you hear this is to think, 'Oh man, how low can we sink?' But it's all going to depend on how it's executed.

Since these competitions can also lend themselves to television broadcasts, there is no reason to believe that we may not see more organized competitions in the future, ... If television can figure out how to make playing cards interesting, it should certainly be able to do so with video games.

One reason we watch these shows is the cheese factor. This ups the cheese equity of American Idol , as opposed to the (1950s) quiz shows scandals, which undermined the very value of what those shows were.

One can argue the history of America has been one big makeover show,

One thing that made this comic territory was that there was very quickly somebody they could go after, and somebody they could go after in a separate, safe kind of way.

No one would ever likely confuse reality TV with Masterpiece Theatre.

Now when you see the promos for 'Category 7,' everybody knows what that title means, everyone knows what FEMA is.

Obviously, we are disappointed. We never want to see fatalities go up. Even one fatality is too many.

Nobody had that expectation before. Television was something you had absolutely no control over.

retro, nostalgia, second-time-around industry, which is huge in this country.

Only in the new millennium, in the waning days of ironic cultural breakdown could something like this have happened. He is now a brilliant actor.

New Year's Day was the perfect time for football because you could roll out of bed and you could start watching football, even before you manage to mix your aspirin and water. The second (of January) is just not the same. Some people are going to have to get up. The dynamic gets broken. The whole calculus changes.

From the outside you look at these contestants and think 'get a life,' but within certain subcultures ù and we're all in one that looks strange to the outside ù if you're a part of that rabid fan community, this is one of the ways you express it and rise to the top of that subculture.

For most of the '60s, television was trying to hold the dyke. All of these changes and pressures built up throughout the 1960s and finally burst in January of 1971.

He is like a pig in slop in this thing -- this is clearly what he was born to do. When I first heard about 'The Apprentice' I thought it was a great idea for a show -- and I thought Donald Trump was going to stink the whole thing up. I was 100 percent wrong.

What I see of change -- to the extent that there is change -- is a shift from trade-distorting payments to non-distorting trade.

(His videos were) adding a new dimension. I mean, Michael Jackson was a good musician, but I don't think the music would have been what it was without the moonwalk, without that extraordinary choreography that he splashed onto the screen.

(His videos were) adding a new dimension, ... I mean, Michael Jackson was a good musician, but I don't think the music would have been what it was without the moonwalk, without that extraordinary choreography that he splashed onto the screen.

He's been doing this for years. This guy is a completely different category.

It becomes very clear that the oil industry wants to develop 100 percent of the North Slope - the land and the ocean.

It becomes just another media in which these celebrities work.

I think the American culture right now is in a state where we have an unlimited appetite for irony. The great thing about a weird pageant is, if you don't win, is that really a bad thing?

I think we have yet to realize how much we are going to miss that. I don't think it's a total coincidence that it's happening at the same time there's an increasingly divisive nature in the country. What the consensus medium of television used to do, and radio before that, was to provide this enormous center that everybody had to go to now and then. ... Now, there is a lack of cultural consensus that even extends to what we consider the body of facts we used to debate.

I think that dramatically, he had kind of been used up, ... If they can put some other compelling new characters in there that can hook people with a bunch of new storylines, you in essence have got a new show.

I think it's now beyond a trend. It's now a form, just like soap operas, doctor shows, or legal shows. I doubt you, me, our children or our grandchildren will know a time without it.

I think we all learned not only from 9/11, but even from the snowstorms last fall, that being prepared - yourself and your family - with the basic necessities can only help.

I think to some extent the opportunity to go and take the place of an iconic figure of rock and roll, well, what's the psychology of not wanting to do that? You'll see a kid play air guitar in a garage. It's the same thing. It's easy for these people to get teased, and some behave in ways that they invite it. But I don't think it's intrinsically sick or strange. What is colonial Williamsburg but people in historical drag?

It is one of the few shows on American television, especially after you get past those first couple of weeks, where really little kids love it, grandma loves it. It's got the kind of wide appeal we used to see all the time on network TV that we very seldom see anymore.

I think the '70s was the last pure decade. Once you're in the '80s, you're in the post-modern era,

People are ceasing to believe those things for which we have empirical evidence. That creates a vacuum into which psychics can flow.

Parents are now talking about kids staying home playing poker instead of going out to movies. It opened up this whole other area.

Real World' took MTV from being a venue where people have video wallpaper and background noise to what arguably is one of the great dramas that became the voice of a generation,

That definition of perky is really kind of a sexist statement. We could apply that to a lot of guys as well.

The '50s and '60s were an enormous golden age.

Will & Grace' alone should make the argument that gay characters are by no means the kiss of death for a show. There's no sign that these kinds of characters are bad for ratings.

You always have a certain affinity to the programming you watch from the age of six, ... where your consciousness is formed, until high school, and anything that comes after that will be positioned in your psyche in a different way.

Those days are over. Forget leaving your radio off in the car or not watching CNN. Whatever your Internet service is, it's likely to announce all the results.

To have a public intellectual host the Oscars, that doesn't happen too much. My biggest worry would be that he'd upstage the entire night.

The peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich is part of the whole Elvis mystique. He wasn't only the king, he was one of us.

Where else would you do this? If you do this in a serious venue, it would sound smarmy, produced and self-conscious. The best way to get out of (trouble) and get a few laughs is to have a late-night comic helping you through.

This story is way more interesting than the 70 up-close-and-personal feature stories that ran during the Olympics.

There are a lot of people not doing well in their alternative rock acts, who are turning around and looking at their friends in Grateful Dead bands, Elvis tributes, who are getting gigs. There was a demand for the original groups.

We don't care if we're playing Michael Jordan, we want to win. They wore us down. We've got to get tougher.

When Ellen came back with the Emmys (in November 2001), she was coming back to a culture that had been put on total and complete hold, ... a felicitous coincidence.

This time, you mention the word 'Survivor' and you can almost hear the crickets chirping in the background and the sagebrush blowing across the town.

This time, because there was something else a little more important in the headlines for these newsgathering operations to deal with, they virtually didn't cover this at all, ... Consequently, I would say on the order of several million people who probably would like to have watched 'Survivor' might not even have known it was on.

There are religious activities; there are wedding receptions; there are a lot of family reunions there.

The only difference is that television is such a predominant medium. ... Radio used to have sitcoms and doctor shows and cop shows and game shows and all the different genres, and television wrestled that primary entertainment away from it. But I think in terms of its impact on the medium of radio, yes, this is going to be a very big deal.

The good news is that, today, adults can watch programs that were way better than before. We can watch 'The Sopranos' and 'Deadwood' and 'Sex and the City' and other really interesting, emotionally complex shows that I would not in a million years suggest watching with anybody younger than 14.

To some extent, the Oscars and Emmys are the mother of all awards shows and are immune to that. But then, who would have guessed that Miss America would be leaving Atlantic City and playing on a cable channel that didn't exist several decades ago?

The opportunities exceed the ability of most people, even rabid fans, to consume. Because of that, are people going to quit watching? I don't think so. They can't watch all of them, but they'll watch the ones they're most interested in.

There doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

This turned out to be a story that didn't even have enough traction to compete with the runaway bride, which blew Michael Jackson off the screen for a week and a half.

What is so great about the variety show is that in many cases, it is completely uncorrupted. It hasn't been worn out through syndication,

We got a lot of kids in the neighborhood going up and down these streets and everything, so it's sad. For the family's sake, you just hope that they would get their daughter returned.

Twenty years ago when Live AID or Farm Aid played, that was a big deal. That was something very different. Now these things seem to be the response to big very bad disastrous events.

When all the smoke is cleared, the way the evening news is done after (NBC's Tom) Brokaw, Rather and (ABC News's Peter) Jennings will look very similar to how it looked before -- a single anchor reading the news, passing it to reporters who will do little pieces.

VOD is perfect for established hits, and for reruns of shows that didn't have enough viewers to keep them on the air. 'Freaks and Geeks' had a lot of people watching, but not enough to keep it on the air. With VOD, you don't have to worry about getting a 15 share. If a show already had its network run and the production expenses are paid, anything after that is gravy.

Everyone was saying that ... network news was a dinosaur. Given the amount of attention to this story, I think it demonstrates that people still care about network news. It's not dead yet.

Every element of this story added up to what I call the perfect storm. When I first heard about it, I was almost sure it was embellished.

Cool is certainly a charter member for the slang hall of fame. Cool just sits back and keeps getting used generation after generation and lets the whole history of the language roll off its back.

Elvis Presley Ate Here' is the cultural equivalent of 'George Washington Slept Here', ... Every time a place makes a claim that Elvis ate there, it becomes a memorial to his memory, to his life and to his legend.

Even if it stopped now, its combination of longevity and quality has never been matched, ... is one of the great comic creations. ... He's complex in his own lack of complexity.

Even Candy Land (a child's game invented in 1949) has a special anniversary edition. Old-fashioned board games are enjoying a real renaissance.

Farrah Fawcett was in the prime of her big-haired, buxom beauty. She was the kind of person who could completely make 'Battle of the Network Stars' work. She was kind of goofy and she was such a huge star and you really wanted to see what she was like. And what you saw was a little peculiar and that made it fun.

There simply are not a lot of really good movies that people were interested in. Every time a new element enters the field -- movies have to be better to attract people.

There's going to be plenty of market demand for all the corn and soybean meal that efficient producers in North and South America can produce. I predict that by 2050 there will be real questions raised about the morality of burning food for fuel.

These are the things that make the Oscars fun.

The star approval in OK! makes it less sleazy on one level and therefore less interesting.

The tape was the key. Without it, no one would believe you. The video is not perfect, a little grainy, but that's what makes it so quaint, so appealing.

Thank God that somebody did find it. I grew up with her father -- we all kind of grew up together -- so I've known them forever.

Technology Enterprise Park is the latest addition to the successful and ongoing efforts to foster the commercialization of research at Georgia Tech through Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures.

Sometimes a performance is best experienced with other people. The real advantage of television - that theater and the movies don't have - is you're allowed to talk through it.

rough contrivance to lift from the social conscience a burden that should not be either lifted or lightened in any way.

Reality has taken a major hit. But it's far from dead, and some form of this stuff is going to be on television for at least the next century, if not longer.

Reality TV comes along and it proceeds to marry with every other type of program and have offspring. We've got reality TV married to a talent show ? 'Nashville Star' and 'American Idol.' And now I think the same is happening with home improvement shows.

People expected to go in to see a movie, and it was like a guerrilla attack. No one was expecting it, especially in Manhattan.

Then, all of a sudden, it was big money. It went from small stakes to huge stakes, but at the same time, it was still very challenging.

The music is secondary. The real pull is watching people grab for the brass ring. They're climbing the ladder. This is the great American story.

So when we're watching The Sopranos in reruns ten years from now, on a big-screen, it will still look good.

And the most amusing thing is when they would start behaving as if this were the Super Bowl.

The big thing is going to be when it becomes standard equipment in cars.

Alcoholic beverages are to New Year's as a turkey is to Thanksgiving and a jack-o'-lantern is to Halloween. It's the central iconographic image. There's not much else.

You're seeing law enforcement falling apart and a modern, industrialized city brought to a complete breakdown, and these stories about the looting and the sniper fire are very much playing into this.

This is a pretty big deal. Last year, we had New Year's Eve without Dick Clark and now New Year's Day without college football games. What's become of the holiday?

This is one of Ellen DeGeneres' specialties. When you do an Emmy awards after a crisis like this, you need to fulfill the purpose of the awards show and yet not seem too self-important. She seems to be very good at it.

This is pretty prevalent these days. Everyone knows of a kid like this. Then to see him go out and do this ...

This came out as the center of the universe for the demographic of young people and it managed to bring together people who would have been very disparate in what radio stations they listened to. But they all came together in this one television hangout.

They didn't let Martha be the Martha that everybody wanted to see. If they could have shown Martha the way they show the participants -- to their vast disadvantage -- people would have loved it.

There's a history in American culture about animals. You have sincere animals such as Rin Tin Tin and Lassie who are essentially heroic. And you've also got your wise-cracking animals. ... You turn an animal into something that becomes a commentary on the silliness of human life.

They have the biggest audience of the year. And what we watch is the modern version of a 1950s variety show.

There's a lot of people that are going to become homeless cause they can't afford to live anywhere.

There's a lot of us Native people in Alaska that do not want it.

There's a place for what Geraldo does in the universe of journalistic commentary. I'm just not sure they've always found the right place for him to be . . . including this new show.