With a television show, it's about fighting to get it on the screen every week. It's like going into battle, and you have to fight these fights. Some are big fights, some are skirmishes, some you can come to detente on, but it's always a fight.
Alfred GoughTelevision has always been a conversation. Movies come along and they're kind of like three-ring circuses, and there's a new one next week.
Alfred GoughAnd having those mystical elements you see in Asian cinema and certainly Asian martial arts cinema, it's something that we wanted to begin to introduce - the idea of spirituality and the idea of there being something else out in the world besides people who are great fighters.
Alfred GoughMiles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.
Alfred GoughWe now live in a world both in film and television where everything is based on something. You point out, "Star Wars" was an original screenplay, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," an original screenplay, "Ghostbusters" an original screenplay, "Back to the Future." All these things that people love were original ideas many years ago.
Alfred GoughThey [movies] don't really have the cultural impact - other than "Star Wars," of course - that they used to because television is something that week to week people invite into their homes. It's a relationship that in success can go on six, seven, eight years. I think certainly in the early days, you definitely want that engagement.
Alfred Gough