Steven Bochco Quotes

#1. The thing that has always interested me in the kinds of shows that I do have more to do with the consequences of behavior than the behavior itself. Pulling a trigger and shooting somebody, or dismembering somebody.

Steven Bochco

#2. Cop shows are by definition melodramatic; they're larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They're provocative, assuming they grapple with - to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture.

Steven Bochco

#3. Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

Steven Bochco

#4. Imagery is like music.

Steven Bochco

#5. Privately, we always called 'Hill Street' 'Cop Soap.'

Steven Bochco

#6. 'Hill Street,' because of the wacky nature of many of our characters, really allowed us to indulge a kind of cheek-to-jowl juxtaposition of high drama with very low humor.

Steven Bochco

#7. One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

Steven Bochco

#8. If bad taste were a felony, every writer I know would've done prison time.

Steven Bochco

#9. Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Steven Bochco

#10. I tend not to spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. If you say, 'Oh, I did 'Hill Street Blues' or 'L.A. Law' and everything I do has to measure up to some preconceived notion of that,' it would paralyze you.

Steven Bochco

#11. You have to give directors and cinematographers a word blueprint for visuals, but I had to learn that from experience.

Steven Bochco

#12. Hill Street Blues might have been the first television show that had a memory. One episode after another was part of a cumulative experience shared by the audience.

Steven Bochco

#13. Being a good television screenwriter requires an understanding of the way film accelerates the communication of words.

Steven Bochco

#14. I remember practically every joke I've ever heard in my life.

Steven Bochco

#15. Hill Street Blues gave me an opportunity to work with an ensemble cast of people whose work I admired.

Steven Bochco

#16. When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.

Steven Bochco

#17. The entertainment world, television, movies, social media, YouTube stuff, we're so bombarded with so much imagery and such a great sense of inhumanity, and there is a coarseness, a coarsening of interaction.

Steven Bochco

#18. When all of your decisions are based on economics, you end up with a sameness of vision. You're not taking the risks, you're not exploiting the passions of your creators. You're manufacturing product for a huge vending machine.

Steven Bochco

#19. Vivid images are like a beautiful melody that speaks to you on an emotional level. It bypasses your logic centers and even your intellect and goes to a different part of the brain.

Steven Bochco

#20. When you look at Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat and all these twentysomething billionaires, it's really kind of fascinating; a classic tale of the haves and have-nots.

Steven Bochco

#21. I think the best work flows out of a collaborative environment.

Steven Bochco

#22. I'd always thought that 'NYPD Blue' really would open those doors. While I think it created a much broader template for cable, I don't think it really did that much for network television.

Steven Bochco

#23. Casting is sort of like looking at paintings. You don't know what you'll like, but you recognize it when you see it.

Steven Bochco