Mitchell Hurwitz Quotes

Regret is a tricky word. Here's a big secret: nobody knows what wasn't.

We figured the interesting question for them is, "Where has the family been since 2006, since the last time we saw them?" So, part of the time, we had to spend answering that question. Then, inevitably, it goes up to a point of crisis, in everyone's show. There was just no getting around that it was about 2006-2012.

There's real peril in trying to repeat yourself, and apply rules that applied to something else to a new project.

With 'Arrested Development,' we tried showing the deep disdain that connects a family. We wanted to hold up a mirror to American society. And, just as predicted, America looked away.

As somebody who wanted to be creative, growing up, I remember always thinking that the thing I had going against me was Orange County because it seemed like all of the comedy was coming out of New York, and it still is, to a certain extent.

Writers need restrictions. If somebody just says, "Hey, do you want to write a novel, or an article, or a movie, or a short story, you get shut down."

I had a cookie business there, with my brother, when we were growing up, called the Chip Yard, and that became the inspiration for the banana stand. My father said that he wanted us to develop a work ethic, so we'd sit there selling cookies, all day.

We will be looking at things like the confluence of a scene, and we still have all these creative decisions to make. In general, we're going to just try to make these under a half-hour. We're going to try to take that kind of cable TV comedy model.

It's like, if I had the luxury of choice, and didn't have to worry about making a living, I would definitely want to get into whatever field it was that allowed me to push further and further comedically. Because that's the joy of it.

I will tell you that we're all human beings, and we all care about what people think of us. But in general, their outlook is, "We're not looking at opening night numbers. We're not looking at opening night box office. We want this to be part of the reason you come to our service."

Chance favors the well prepared. The more stuff you throw in, the more chances you have of looking like, 'I did that.'

We mapped out the whole movie, and then worked backwards from that to do these shows. It might not be a movie. It might be something else.

My knee-jerk is that it is comedy and, if you watch them all back-to-back, you will gain something and you will lose something.

I think of there being two conditions that creative people go through. I think it's fear and curiosity.

You know, 'The Golden Girls' was a very unusual show to start on. I was young, and it was a show about old people, and it was a very traditional show, but it was also an amazing training ground for a joke-writer. It forced me to learn those skills.

When I was on 'The Golden Girls,' we'd have eight scenes per show. And when 'Seinfeld' came along, they went to, like, 30 scenes a show, which was revolutionary. 'Arrested Development' has probably got 60 scenes per show. It just keeps emerging as this more and more complex thing. I always try to keep it very simple at its heart.

We started writing the shows in order, and then very quickly had to jump to, "Oh, we got Tony Hale today and Jessica [Walter." We've got to jump ahead and write that stuff that's in Jessica's show. Fortunately, we knew the story, but it was challenging.

The people that always impress me are the ones that are curious about what they're going to do next.

At the time, I used to say, "We should market this like Everybody Loves Raymond. It's just a guy dealing with his family." Instead, it was irresistible to show all these funny people. So, I actually think this could be more inviting to a new audience because they can just watch one character, find out what's going on in his life, and then meet another character and find out what's going on in her life, and then see how it intersects the other one.

There's a lot that you can do in television that you can't do with a film, theoretically. At the time, the only possibility was to do a movie.

I have this identity for myself as a writer and the only thing that can happen is that I chip away from it.

Everybody keeps falling back to the same patterns without doing too much dramaturgy.

First of all, there is absolutely an order that we have put together to create the maximum number of surprises, but that's just part of our storytelling.

The "executive producer" title either means that you're the person who created, or co-created, the show, or you're the person who's in charge of day-to-day operations. Whereas "producer" is often just a writing credit.

When we were making 'Arrested Development,' it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. You know, nobody was watching. We weren't getting feedback. The job wasn't paying very well. But the one thing I did feel confident about was: No one will ever be able to do this again. Because no one would be stupid enough to try.

The form came out of the function because it is for the audience that already knows the show, while hoping to get a new audience, too.

There are elements of that, where you'll see a scene again and you'll recognize it, but I wouldn't say it's got one conceit like that, at all. It definitely has those jokes, but it would be wrong to say this is a show where, every time you see it, you see a new angle.

When you don't have a laugh track, you can make the clothes funny. We can make a sign funny. We can make the way somebody walks funny. The makeup can be funny.

There are a lot of things that are in the show that harken back to the old show, but I really wanted to resist doing a greatest hits. It was irresistible to do a greatest hits, but it was almost too easy. There are things that I know are still ahead of us, in the future of whatever Arrested Development brings.

Even on the old show, we would maybe not all be in the scene. Sometimes there would be a penthouse scene and everyone would get together. But, even in that context, it would be because somebody was missing.

Something about not waiting for the laugh of a laugh track allows you to take lines that otherwise might be seen as just direct jokes, and make them seem realistic.

I've never had a working relationship like I have with them. I developed a lot of the design of this show with them. That conversation was about, "What are your needs? What are you looking for? Will this work for you guys? Will a show work where you've got one episode per character?" They really were a creative partner.

Television is a very writer-driven business, and it's one of the few parts of entertainment where writers are treated with respect, only because they need you. If they didn't have to treat you with respect, they would be happy to dismiss you.

Well, at the time, you have to remember that we were not successful. The Showtime offer, as it was presented to me, was half the money for half the show. I was not interested, at that point, in doing a smaller cast and a more simplified Arrested Development.

But, you have to watch them in order. That's very important because, as it turns out, stories have to be told in order. It's like reading a novel. There are times when it's tiring. And then, you get hooked and it's a page-turner, and you really want to keep reading. I do think there will be some fatigue that sets in.

What's realistic to me is that families love each other and stand by each other. What's unrealistic is that they would ever say that.

I hope to take advantage of the Netflix organism and see if there are ways to get in new material and see if there are ways to do deleted scenes.

I could vomit, right this moment. I literally could vomit on cue. Yes. Here's the truth of that. We didn't have a big audience, obviously, when we made the show. Very early on, we made a decision that we were going to try to give the fans and the people that were loyal to us something that they felt was special.

Netflix will know everything. Netflix will know when a person stops watching it. They have all of their algorithms and will know that this person watched five minutes of a show and then stopped. They can tell by the behavior and the time of day that they are going to come back to it, based on their history.

I joked recently that I thought 30 seconds a day for three years would be the best way to enjoy it, and I'm going to stand by that statement.

Thanks to the critics and thanks to the Emmys, we got all sorts of great reviews and notices and awards, at the start. Part of it is that it's great fortune to have something to live up to, but as creative people, we all have to just put that aside and go forward, make the best product we can, have as joyous of an experience as we can, and really remember that the spirit of this was to surprise the fans with something that they didn't see coming.

I always liked magic. I was always embarrassed by liking magic because I liked the fact that they're just lying.

The TV industry works in this crazy system where everybody's trying to get the same actors at the same time.

What you'll gain is the macro story. You'll get a good command of that. And what you might lose is some of the fun of it.

They say to just write about what's happening in your backyard because that's where you find the most creativity. It's in the DNA of the show. There's no question.

The revolution is here. It's established that Netflix is a place where you can get premium content. It's a whole new world. It's very interesting. We'll be discovering it together. It's going to be interesting because they don't have a lot to compare it to.

I always feel funny when I don't reveal things, especially to you [the press], who have supported us so much and are really the big reason we're here. But, we hold back information about the plot because we want to reward the fans for sticking with us, and that's so much fun. That's the funnest part of it.