Dick Wolf Quotes

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

It was like in Samoa when they’d put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

If the scripts are not good, I’ll tell somebody, ‘This isn’t good.

If you’re going to vote on a television contract, there is a certain rationality to saying that the same structures that are applied to Health Plan participation should be placed on the right to vote on a strike.

I hardly see myself as a futurist.

I think most people don’t react well to being screamed at. It’s counterproductive.

There are professional negotiators working for the writers and the actors, but basically you’ve got the writers and actors negotiating against businessmen. That’s why you get rhetoric.

I get bored with establishing shots of people getting out of cars and walking into buildings, getting into elevators and then 45 seconds later they have a line.

The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.

I do love television. But the business is accelerating and people are not getting the chance to fail.

You have this disturbing reality that there are a lot of people who would rather say, ‘I’m on strike’ than ‘I’m unemployed.’ And those are the people who vote for strikes.

I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don’t go out on strike because then there’s no work and no potential of work.

The ad revenues still go up because nothing dependably delivers the eyeballs that successful series do.

People recognize certain things, like ‘D’ means ‘this dialogue stinks.’ We’re dealing with shows that are written here, shot in New York and posted back here. Accurate communication is a necessity.

Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.

There are other options out there, after all, like read a book, go on the Internet, rent a movie.

[My] dream writers room: “‘Naked City.’ Because it still holds up as the absolutely quintessential New York pure cop procedural.”

I don’t think you can really make television based on what you think audiences want. You can only make stories that you like, because you have to watch it so many times.

The heart and soul of network programming is series programming, the weekly repetition of characters you like having in your house.

The most positive step is to try to expand the employment base by making it, if not economically friendly, at least not economically disastrous, for studios to take on deficits.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

And the consumer doesn’t care. They don’t watch networks, they watch TV shows.

Their argument is that most shows are losers, which is true, but it’s also disingenuous to say, ‘We are not going to take the risk unless it is totally covered by the few successful shows that are out there.’

The environment doesn’t change that radically. You are still going to go home at night and NBC is going to be there, ABC and CBS will still be there.

The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.

As soon as you become complacent your show gets canceled.

I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the history of show business.