What’s a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you’re just so excited to see anything – the moment the lights go down is often the best part.

All the times I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of a show that’s actually gotten on the air, it’s always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.

One of my favorite things about ‘Star Trek’ wasn’t just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face;...

You never want to have that ticking clock and know that you had all this time and didn’t use it.

We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there’s almost a sense of entitlement to that.

The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you’ve got to take advantage of.

I’ve never done Twitter.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it...

When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don’t have a decent act out, the audience probably won’t be there in the numbers you want when the...

I think that even if you’re wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.

I feel like obviously the standard for what TV looks like changes all the time.

I love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.

My work isn’t any more important than anything else in the family.

The goal is always to do B material in an A fashion.

I don’t try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

You know, we’ve got to this place, where you go to a movie for one particular surgical fix. So, it’s like, I want the pulse-pounding action, or the insane falling-off-my-seat comedy, or the devastating, heart-breaking...

I don’t think I have a signature.

I have nothing against 3-D in theory. But I’ve also never run to the movies because something’s in 3-D.

As a kid, ‘Star Wars’ was much more my thing than ‘Star Trek’ was.

‘Star Trek’ was always a little bit closed emotionally. I never connected to the characters.

When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and the real, it suddenly can become supernatural. The hypothetical and the theoretical can become literal.

Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of...

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it’s not necessarily ubiquitous.

I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn’t have to be a creature.

I’m not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people’s imaginations.

There’s nothing wrong with doing sequels, they’re just easier to sell.

When I was a kid, it was a huge insult to be a geek. Now it’s a point of pride in a weird way.

Obviously with the Internet and increased access to other means of watching shows, the audience has dispersed and is all over the place and that is a challenge.

Pitching is always a weird, difficult thing.

I love recording music.

When there’s an authentic mystery, as opposed to just a question being asked, that’s what makes you lean forward.

What I’m still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

When I was a kid, among the other embarrassing things I would do, and there’s a list of stupid things, but I would make these dumb comedy tapes. I would often make prank phone calls,...

Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don’t think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.

Whenever I’ve directed something, there’s this feeling of demand and focus that I like.

I try to work on shows that I would want to watch.

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.

When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren’t force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.

The Internet now provides an immediate and very clear consensus of what it is that the audience is experiencing. It’s something that you should never let lead you, and yet at the same time, you...

When I was a little kid – and even still – I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made – at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios...

I was never really a comic-book fanatic.

I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.

With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can’t be fastidious.

You can never guess or assume what anyone is going to think.

We’re living at a time where if you do a Google search for a ‘show, review and network,’ you’ll get ‘The New York Times’ and Pete Billingsley from a town you’ve never heard of on...

I am lucky, I’m the first to admit that.

I’d love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction.

I hope to make movies that are so small they don’t need to make anything to be profitable.