We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.

I've worked in the movie business for many, many years, where you have lots of days and lots of money. It's really mainly about time. We always try to conceive all of our action from a place of, "What can we shoot that looks fantastic?," rather than trying to do the kinds of thing that you would be able to accomplish in a movie.

You know, we certainly have a great budget on the show, but the expansions to world of the show really arise because, and this is kind of the idea of the premise of the show, where is each week you're kind of meeting . . . It's random access.

Typically with HBO shows, the ninth episode often winds up being a big one and when lots of exciting stuff happens. And then the tenth one is the more placid, character-based one.

When J.J. [Abrams] called Lisa [Joy] and myself, he pitched us this idea of, what if we turn the structure around and started with the hosts. For us, that gave us a way to play with everything that we're interested in, all at once. It's the ultimate playground for us because we deal with questions about artificial intelligence, which is something I've long been fascinated by, but also human intelligence, or the lack thereof, human behavior, and interactive, immersive storytelling.

I always love it best when you have a project where there is this commingling of the subject matter and the way in which you're recording that subject matter.

We're gonna play a little bit of a game here [Person of Interest movie]. Greg and I felt like we had responsibility when we wrapped up the pilot, to have a roadmap for where the show went. When we pitched the pilot, we knew what we wanted the last episode to be, the last image, I think we even know what the last song is.