The one thing that TV is bad at doing is preaching. There are two extremes, you either turn the people into a punchline or turn them into hero, and both of those things suck, because most people are neither in real life.
If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.
I think you should know that real-life white people are not all as funny as the ones on 'Seinfeld'.
A lot of times in television, you don't get the opportunity to show real life because we're brainwashed to believe the propaganda that these things aren't marketable, that these things don't sell.
When people screamed novelty the first time around talking about an ugly video and stuff I was really insulted because, hold on a minute, everyone you see in the video are real life.
The recent controversy over the portrayal of Ken Taylor and his embassy staff in the movie 'Argo' brought home to me the great responsibility we writers have when telling stories that involve real people.
I think shows that are completely dramatic are a lie. People use humor to cope. That is how we deal with things. In the darkest situations, there's humor. And if you don't show that, you're not being true to real life.
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.
