Steven Bochco Quotations

I'd like an hourly progress report on the FEMA teams on the ground.

I'd always thought that 'NYPD Blue' really would open those doors. While I think it created a much broader template for cable, I don't think it really did that much for network television.

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

When you look at Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat and all these twentysomething billionaires, it's really kind of fascinating; a classic tale of the haves and have-nots.

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.

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.

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.

Cop shows are by definition melodramatic; they're larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They're provocative, assuming they grapple with - to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture.

There's nobody who works harder. There's nobody who's had greater success, ... And if his product is generating billions, then he should get his fair share of that.

Privately, we always called 'Hill Street' 'Cop Soap.'

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

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

I remember practically every joke I've ever heard in my life.

I tend not to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. If you say, 'Oh, I did 'Hill Street Blues' or 'L.A. Law' and everything I do has to measure up to some preconceived notion of that,' it would paralyze you.

'Hill Street,' because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.

I don't think there's going to be a SAG strike,

If bad taste were a felony, every writer I know would've done prison time.

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.

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

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.

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

The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.

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

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

Imagery is like music.

The thing that has always interested me in the kinds of shows that I do have more to do with the consequences of behavior than the behavior itself. Pulling a trigger and shooting somebody, or dismembering somebody.

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

When all of your decisions are based on economics, you end up with a sameness of vision. You're not taking the risks, you're not exploiting the passions of your creators. You're manufacturing product for a huge vending machine.

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

The thing that always interests me from a storytelling point of view is how that moment of trauma, whatever the trauma is, even divorce, your dog dies, whatever it is, the consequence, in terms of people's emotional lives and the way it resonates behaviorally for a long time is really the stuff that interests me.

When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.

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

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