Television Producers

"In no particular order, I could not or would not exist without air, food, water, gravity, tides, the moon, the sun, night, civilization, the laws of physics, the laws of thermodynamics, the law of the land, ancestors having sex, DNA, viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, oceans, ice caps, the kindness of strangers, the Big Bang, familial bonds, smart people, brave people, memory, medicine, the periodic table of elements, tribal instincts, magnetic fields, weather, Earth's molten core, a rotating Earth, a tilted Earth, tectonic plates, sleep, death, heat, consciousness, evolution, teachers and the miraculous, self-regulating chemical factory that is my body. Other than that, I like to think of myself as a self-made man."

"Gratitude."

"Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, dear me. Happy birthday to me. (And 20 more would be nice)"

"Dear Alf, I'm your number one fan. I like you because you're an alien but you're funny, unlike my brother who's an alien but just a jerk. Anyway, I hope you're enjoying your time here on our planet and have found things to eat other than cats. I recommend chicken nuggets. Sincerely, Missy Cooper, age 10. P.S. My favorite color is pink. What's yours?"

"Connie Tucker is proud to announce that she is sweet on Dr. John Sturgis and they are officially a romantic couple."

"Scrabble fans might be troubled to see 3 Y tiles in tonight's episode. Fear not. The "Super Scrabble" version of the game actually comes with 4 Y tiles. Disaster averted."

"Congratulations Young Sheldon, for reaching 100 episodes!"

"The Writers Guild of America, of which I am a proud member, is on strike. While I'm pretty sure vanity cards are not covered under the pre-existing contract (I've certainly never been paid to write them), I still feel uncomfortable writing during a period of labor unrest (truth be told, I feel uncomfortable writing during a period of labor rest). Now that I think about it, I'm also uncomfortable with the word "labor". While I've put in very long hours over the years (70 hour weeks were not unusual), I've mostly been sitting on my ass, staring at a computer screen and wondering what comes next (maybe a writers strike should be called "ruminating unrest"). Regardless, I don't want to do anything that inadvertently helps the evil empire, so until a fair and equitable solution can be found, I'm going to walk around in a circle waving a stick with a sign. An activity that more closely resembles "labor"."

"Back in the days of network television, a vanity card in the end credits was a means by which writer-producers could express their creative dominion over the just-viewed show. It was dubbed a vanity card because vanity was all it had going for it. The actual producer of the show was the company that financed the show - that took the financial risk. The hierarchy was simple, the writer-producer couldn't fire the company, but the company could fire the writer-producer. I can vouch for this because I've been fired. A couple of times. But here we are now in the world of streaming television. On the plus side, a world where end credits are barely viewed by anyone. The viewer is actually encouraged to skip over them and quickly re-engage with another episode, or a different show or movie. Which brings me back to vanity cards. Why on Earth am I writing vanity cards for Bookie? My friends and family won't bother to read them. They might not even be able to find them. One might say, "If a vanity card is written on Max, and no one reads it, was it amusing?" Fuck if I know."

"Hi! It's been awhile. Haven't written a vanity card in what? Nine, ten months? There was a writers' strike. An actors' strike. A directors'... oh well, doesn't matter now. We're all friends. Colleagues. The folks who go to Sun Valley and the folks who go to San Fernando Valley are all on the same team. Thrilling audiences around the world. Making 'em laugh, making 'em cry. Making 'em wonder when this friggin' movie is gonna be over. I think I can speak for the thousands of people in show business I've never met, when I say we are very grateful to be back at work. Because it's only when we're working, do we have any sense of self-worth. But that might just be me."

"As I'm sure you know, network television has been undergoing seismic changes. Audiences have so many more choices than ever before, which I believe it's a good thing. The only difficulty is it's hard to measure what constitutes success. In the past, if you enjoyed tonight's premiere episode of Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage, I'd asked you to spread the word. Get some word of mouth going. That's no longer necessary. Now all I need is an algorithm, or bot, or some sort of silicon-based magical genie to secure the future of the show. Hey, Siri! Mm-hmm?"

"Heads up. I'm only writing this one card for Season 2 of Bookie. The reason is no one, not even my family and friends, bothers to read them. It's not surprising. Max actively dissuades viewers from reading end credits, let alone sticking around to read the mischievous word salad that is a classic Chuck Lorre vanity card. They want you, for their own selfish reasons, to immediately leap into the next episode or, failing that, MILF Manor. So once again, do not bother looking for a new card at the end of the remaining 7 episodes of Bookie. There won't be one. Will the world be a poorer place? I like to think so. If you're hungry for a peek inside my fiendishly clever mind. I still have a show with easily accessible vanity cards on CBS. Ask your grandma what that is and where it can be found."

"Getting the jump on David Ellison, Netflix, Apple, and Comcast, Chuck Lorre has offered to pay one million dollars in cash for Warner Bros. Discovery. To sweeten the pot, Mr. Lorre will include two weeks at a time-share condo in CABO (not Christmas), if WBD agrees to keep the Discovery channels."

"Working at Warner Bros. is like being raised by a single mom who keeps bringing home strange men!"

"I am so daunted by [reputation] that I never think about it. It is a thing bigger than I am capable of perceiving. Other people are more aware and concerned with it than I could ever allow myself to be."

"And at this stage in her seemingly charmed life, when she's moved to Los Angeles and has three children in three different private schools and is redoing a house on the Westside and worrying about fabric samples, she's careered off the beaten path of high drama, if temporarily, to cultivate her comedic connections."

"Meryl Streep’s image is composed of two distinct image clusters centered on her renown as a great actress and her reputation as a devoted wife and mother. A more muted aspect of her star persona – one that is often masked as merely an offshoot of her maternal devotion –is her social activism."

"Her roots go back to England: We traced her back to her eighth grand-grandfather born in England in 1620. In 1645, he shows up in Providence, Rhode Island, as one of the founding fathers of Rhode Island."

"Even [being] in a rehearsal period, with Meryl Streep watching, is a behind-tightening experience."

"Meryl Streep could obviously have made it to the screen on looks alone. The camera embraces her. Lucky camera. Many women would kill for her slender, fashion-model figure, for that ash-blond hair, oval face, porcelain skin and those high, exquisite cheekbones. Her eyes mirror intelligence; their pale blue sparkle demands a new adjective: 'merulean]. Only a slight bump down the plane of her long, patrician nose redeems her profile from perfection."

"Streep, who was born in New Jersey, is known to have historic family ties to Pennsylvania and Rhode Island."

"One of my only role models as a young woman was Meryl Streep and, specifically, her character in Out of Africa. I would watch the movie whenever I needed inspiration because Ms. Streep so brilliantly portrayed an incredibly courageous woman who stands alone to save her plantation. Her performance and the strength of her character were tangible examples of how I wanted to be in the world, and I soaked it in and learned from her experience."

"I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience."

"[On the situation for women in Afghanistan] Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park. [...] A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. The way that this culture, this society has been upended, is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world."

"I'm so sorry to hear this, but this is what it is. It makes it feels like it's sort of my fault on some level, but it also connect be to those events, those first encounters between the two cultures must have been raw, terrifying, brutal and final. conflicts in early American history, known as King Philip’s War, or Metacom’s War, Lawrence Wilkinson defended his town in the face of fierce violence from the Native Americans."

"I am nothing but these people, and as an actor I'm always trying to call up lives and the reason I know these things as an actor is because I have the DNA of all these crazy people."

"Half of me is Streep and the other half is Wilkinson from Lincolnshire so I come by it honestly, this part."

"No! But they were here [in Los Angeles]. Here they were surprised, because it was difficult to finance, the film. A lot of the executives would say, 'I just don't get it.'"

"I don't really. In our business, you're not kicked out necessarily …"

"Well, aren't we all grateful to be alive? I just know lots of people … at my age, I've lost a lot of people in my life and I'm very grateful to be here. That's what I mean."

"I live simply. I don't buy a lot of fashion!"

"Hollywood to me is what it is to you. It's something other than what I am. I sit outside it."

"I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me "You know, what I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep, they were so excited...all ze woman in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you.""

"I was learning that, even for a woman with power, the path was dotted with land mines—she's so ambitious. she's so aggressive. she's ruthless. "Funny thing," I used to say, "a man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless . . . all a woman has to do is put you on hold.""

"Seriously, though, he's doing a grand job!"

"David Frost has risen without trace."

"Having one child makes you a parent; having two makes you a referee."

"Hello, good evening and welcome."

"The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so little to recommend it."

"He is the embodiment of Fleet Street bullying, using his newspaper to peddle his Little-England, curtain-twitching Alan Partridgesque view of the world, which manages to combine sanctimonious, pompous moralising and prurient, voyeuristic, judgmental obsession, like a Victorian father masturbating secretly in his bedroom."

"Every dollar counts And every morning hurts We mostly work to live Until we live to work"

"7 min or less - ur not late, 7-10 "sorry", 10-20 "SO sorry!", 20-30 "i am truly ashamed", over 30 min late - fake ur own death"

"#1000daysof1d congratulations. may you reign for 1000 years. your humble servant, ezra"

"that story is 93% true"

"a writer once asked what I'd say if i ever met my biggest hater. I paused, thought deeply and said, "probably 'suk a dog dik, motherfuker'""

"His Honor drove southward seeking exotica, Down to the pueblo huts of New Mexico, Cut his teeth on turquoise harmonicas, Oh, Oh, Oh..."

"I think ur a contra, And I think that you’ve lied. Don’t call me a contra Till you’ve tried."

"But, wait, Oh, it's much too late Oh, and I cannot be walking home Until I've found my love."

"Sit on a park wall Ask all the right questions "Why are the horses racing taxis in the winter?""

"I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too."