Stephen J. Cannell Quotes
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I'm generally a very happy guy because I'm doing what I want. I'm willing to tell you that there are people who are much better than I am in writing. I don't have to be the fastest gun in the West.
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I formed my own studio, carried my own deficits, owned one-hundred percent of my negatives, and made a lot of mistakes, but we ended up being the third largest TV studio in Hollywood.
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Once you put something like 'The A-Team' on the map, it does become part of the DNA of television. People grab little pieces of it. I certainly grabbed little pieces of other people's shows when I was creating my shows.
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I believe in three-act structure. When I say that to novel people, or people in the world of books, they go, 'Well, that's a film thing.' However, even a good joke has three acts.
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I really hesitate to say that any of my shows influenced other writers.
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So many people get involved with carrying grudges and having these moral battles with people, where they cast themselves as the righteous and the other guy is the dirtbag. They waste tons of energy on it, create all kinds of darkness around themselves and the other person. It gets you nothing.
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A lot of making TV is lightening in a bottle.
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I'm a very conservative businessman. I don't work on credit. My father was the guy who taught me how to think straight, not to delude myself and think I was larger than I was.
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The first act is the easiest to plot. The second act is always the hardest to plot. Generally a good, you know, sometimes the third act can be difficult because you can get into a rut in the third act - everybody runs to their Corvette, has a chase, and you catch the bad guy.
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I believed in the concept of over-performing. I believe anyone can achieve their goals in life if they over-perform, and that means you have to work ten times harder than anybody you see.