Austin Butler Quotes

The biggest difference between British TV and American TV is money. But what money doesn't do on American TV, which I thought it would, is buy you time. You don't get more time. You get more toys.

I essentially have always directed everything on my TV show without using that title; I edited and wrote all my stuff.

I really enjoy working, you know, on streaming outlets because there's so much creative control for the creators of the shows, and, you know, you're allowed to make such great television.

Compared to TV, 'Palookaville' was restriction-free, except we had no money and no time.

Whenever you're doing film for television and you look at the budget that you have, which is much more constricted than a movie budget, you think, "God, are they going to be able to do what they say they are?"

We get a successful television series or something, and next season they give you less time and less money, which is something I've never really understood. That doesn't happen with Game of Thrones.

The reality of television production now is that all the development money and pilot money now goes to the Internet so they can try to get pilots cheaper, than if they were producing them for television. I understand, it's a business, but what's great about doing it on the web, and one thing that attracted me is the amount of creative freedom that you do get with the web. That's the only advantage of there not being a lot of money involved, is that you're really able to write and do what you want... because there's not a lot of money involved and not money at risk.

One of the things that's fun about TV is it grows, and you set goals and aim towards stuff, and one of the writers has an idea, and you say, 'Ooh, that's so much cooler. Let's do that instead.' It's so much more fluid and organic that way, and that's the most fun part about it.

Part of making TV is the process - you just have to churn it out.

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.

In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.

With TV, your first draft just doesn't matter. It's a skeleton, and then there's draft after draft after draft, and so many other factors influence it. It's just a whole different kind of storytelling.

There's no better place to do a longform project than HBO. I loved the creative teams I got a chance to work with.

I worked with HBO on 'Recount,' and we had a wonderful experience together. I'm such a fan of HBO and how much flexibility they give in character as well as schedule.

I've been lucky enough that in the U.K., I've done shows that have aired once a week. I make a show there that runs seasonally, and we make one episode a week, and that is great - the value of time. You can really think and finesse what you want to do.

I spent a whole 12 years helping other people tell their stories as a publicist, so just to be able to go and write and get behind the camera, that's my thing.

A studio that's designed to make television shows is not a studio designed to make a fashion line, so a lot of times, we have ideas for things we might want to do but don't necessarily have the infrastructure to do them in a timely manner.

That is one thing I really hate about working in TV - you have to shape episodes to exact time-lengths, do like 22 minutes, and it is just so against what you are making.

I'm interested in producing more TV shows.

I'd love to set up shop somewhere and develop projects - film, TV, digital would be a fun thing to do.

I would love to be on a really good show and share all the stuff that goes into creating a big TV show and get my audience into it. I think that makes it personal and makes the audience feel like they're a part of it.

TV is all about schedule and budget, and you're always fighting that.

Working on 'Westworld' has been an incredible experience in learning to make something with the scope of a feature on a TV timeline with a budget nowhere near what you would expect for a feature film equivalent.

To get a game show into production is as challenging and as intellectually demanding as it is to write a novel or screenplay.

When you're doing the work, film and TV are exactly the same. TV is just film in reduced pieces.