You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to. What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office and they say, "Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?".

You write a spec, and you pour your heart and soul and life into a spec, and you think that spec is the movie that's going to sell and get made... I've never heard of anybody that happened to. What happens is, you write a spec, people get it, they see your writing, they see you're good, they bring you into their office and they say, "Boy, that spec was really good - we'll never make that in a million years. We have rights to the board game of Monopoly. What do you think about a Monopoly movie?".

There are a huge amount of people who sell a TV pilot, every year, but most of them never get produced. It's very easy to make a living and never get anything produced.

Probably your first agent is going to be some guy who also handles dog acts.

The State trained us to make other people's terrible jokes work, which is the other part of the game when you're here.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.

For a living I write stuff that I know is gonna sell to a studio and make a lot of money at the multiplex.