Bill Lawrence Quotes

The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.

To me, in retrospect, it was amazing that 'Seinfeld' was a show that had such mass appeal. At first it was a disaster in the ratings, but then it became a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if that's possible anymore, but I don't try for that.

It's hard to tell why something touches a zeitgeist and when that same show doesn't in other places.

Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public.

Pop culture is not about depth. It's about marketing, supply and demand, consumerism.

There's a great appetite for smart television. Every day I get up and there are interesting stories I want to do.

I measure success in terms of the connection with the audience, which we've been able to do in spades. I mean, it's very hard to do that. You think about it, you go back in time, you can say, 'Well, there's, like, 'Saturday Night Live' and 'Rolling Stone' or 'MTV.' I think 'Vice' is in that category now.

But reality television is here to stay.

Americas are, for a variety of reasons, the most adept at producing the kind of entertainment that delivers easy satisfactions.

Life goes on, and I'm moving on to the next thing, but I hope the soaps that are still running will thrive. They have millions of loyal viewers.

As an actor, you can believe that you are the reason for a show's success, but these things are a brand name now. They're like Coca-Cola. It's like, with or without you, people are still gonna drink it.

My greatest satisfaction in acting on television is to have the opportunity to communicate with the world.

'The Piano' ended up on television. Everything ends up there anyway.

Every TV show is a crapshoot, really. But every once in a while, a show gets anointed as 'the show.'

I understand popular entertainment better than anyone. I want to have the world's No. 1 tennis player, the hottest movie, the biggest artist.

Once the film is out and a lot of people are seeing it, it becomes almost owned by the cinemagoers of the world.

Some people think literature is high culture and that it should only have a small readership. I don't think so... I have to compete with popular culture, including TV, magazines, movies and video games.

We don't have a laugh track, which helped Seinfeld a lot, and did kind of tell people when to laugh. It just made it a lot easier. Our show doesn't have that, so it's hard for Middle America to catch on.

I want my films to be seen everywhere.

I've sort of closed my mind off to reality shows: I just don't watch them, don't care about them, don't know who the characters are, but they're all in general usage.

My soap operas have been seen by a billion people all around the world.

But I've been surprised over the years. I mean, someone told me the other day that maybe 360 million people have played this game in the world. That's a lot of people.

There's not a lot of light on television.

Today it's not culture; it's box office.

Reality is a genre that seems to be here to stay. I don't know how many of the new shows will last, but the more competition you have, the harder that pie is to slice up.