What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh.
I loved working with 'The Avengers' cast and we had a great time, but it was a job, and they had other commitments during that job, so they would go off and do other things.
I'm a very hard-line, angry atheist. Yet I am fascinated by the concept of devotion.
As far as I am concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.
I think everyone who makes movies should be forced to do television. Because you have to finish. You have to get it done, and there are a lot of decisions made just for the sake of making decisions. You do something because it's efficient and because it gets the story told and it connects to the audience.
I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.
I spent a ton of time alone. I was raised by a feminist; I had a terrifying father and oppressively scary and mean brothers. We had a farm. The rule was between breakfast and lunch you weren't allowed to make a sound.
You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed.
You know, I always was an early morning or late night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning you make up some of your most absurd jokes.
Absolutely eat dessert first. The thing that you want to do the most, do that.
I love to write. I love it. I mean there's nothin in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it.
All of the most important lessons about writing I learned from my father. He never set out to teach me anything, it would just be something he said casually in conversation.
Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.
Something like 'Much Ado' happens, and even 'Avengers' happens because of the years of building connections and doing the work and proving yourself.
I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.
I don't think I'm a celebrity. Maybe I'm a cult figure?
The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it.
I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.
That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said 'But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously,' and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.
When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea.
Buffy loves Angel. He loves her. And I love Ho Hos.
There are two things that I cannot resist: one is musicals and the other is a spaceship in trouble. But I am smart enough not to combine the two things.
A lot of people who saw 'The Avengers' didn't read comic books, don't like comic book movies, and enjoyed it. That was huge for me.
Part of making TV is the process - you just have to churn it out.
What I love most about icons is finding out what's behind them, exploring the price of their power.
I don't have a ton of enemies. I get along with people pretty well when I'm not annoying them to death.
I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.
An audience who watches my shows knows who I am, knows that right when they think I'm going to make a joke, I'm going to blow something up, or during the worst peril, I'm going to have someone give someone a kiss - it's just going to happen.
You learn something every time you make a mistake.
'Buffy' is about growing up. 'Angel' is really about already having grown up, dealing with what you've done, and redemption.
Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died.
Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in.
There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'
Remember to always be yourself.
The networks have a particular agenda, a particular model and structure. It doesn't have anything to do with content. This is not a dis on them - they are a business model, run by business people.
I get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can't go places.
