It's a tough time for screenwriters right now, because fewer movies are getting made. I'm enjoying television so much. It offers opportunities for writers to be in a writers' room and work their way up. It's somewhat easier because there's more of a community. There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.

When people know I wrote 'Thelma and Louise,' they don't want to mess with me.

Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.

My advice is that if you really want to be a screenwriter, get out here and be ready to take no for an answer many times until you find your way through it and are fortunate enough to get something made.

Women who just don't like each other because the other one is a woman and "women don't like each other" myth - that's not interesting to me at all. How do you compete in the market place, how you stay relevant after many years of being in the public eye - all of that. To me, that's interesting and that's real.

We get the best people we can get and it turns out a lot of them are women. I've said this before If you hire people solely on their merit you wind up hiring a lot of women. I wonder how many other shows even come close to our numbers.

One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.