Alex Kurtzman: I think that the line between television and features s...

I asked a director once what the secret of it all was, and he said you have to be so prepared that you are willing to throw all your preparation away in the moment when you see something better. That's a phenomenal piece of advice. It's been my compass through the process of making films. But you can really only do that if you're prepared. You can't wing it.

Alex Kurtzman

preparation secret advice

In fact, we actually listen to fans all the time. It's helpful because you want to get a sense of what people are looking for and what they disagree with.

Alex Kurtzman

disagree helpful people

When you're working on a scene, both in the script phase and also in the moment, you look around and you wait for the lightning bolt to strike you and based on your instincts tell you what the right thing to do is here. And that can result in anything from a change of dialogue to the realisation that what you thought was a dramatic scene should actually have some humour. And maybe if you stage it this way it's funnier, or if you put the camera here it tells a different story. That stuff is kind of everything when you're a director.

Alex Kurtzman

different kind waiting

An emotional story is an emotional story no matter how big or small it is.

Alex Kurtzman

emotional

As a director you have to be at 30,000 ft objectively looking at everything, wondering if you're making the right objective, emotional, story, character choices. As the writer, while you're asking all of those same questions, you're also forced by the nature of what writing is to be looking at everything under a microscope. That's the difference between the two jobs.

Alex Kurtzman

emotional writing character

The thing for me, and I can only really judge this by what I respond to myself as an audience member, I really only respond to a movie if I'm interested in the people who are in it. It's really that simple. If I'm not, then it's all noise.

Alex Kurtzman

simple judging people

I think what all the Universal monster movies are defined by, and what makes them very special, is that it's really the only genre entirely unto itself, in which you fear the monster and fear for the monster. That's a very hard thing to do. To fear for and fear at the same time is extremely unique.

Alex Kurtzman

unique special thinking

When you're a kid and you're a superhero lover, the holy trinity is Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, so to be able to take any of those and play with it is a huge joy.

Alex Kurtzman

play men kids

You always go by your gut. That's the best you can do. You go by what you feel, and you say yes or no based on what it inspires in you.

Alex Kurtzman

guts feels inspire

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.

Alex Kurtzman

emotional mistake character

I think our goal and intention is to make sure that, when you watch each episode, you don't have to make that choice, but also that you can have stand-alone episodes, where a story can have a beginning, middle and end.

Alex Kurtzman

choices goal thinking

You used to have to make a choice. Is it a serialized television show, or is it a stand-alone or procedural? We were wildly influenced by The X-Files. Even when we created Fringe, it was the same thing. It's the gold standard of all gold standards, in genre television, and it was so wonderful because you felt so much for those characters.

Alex Kurtzman

choices gold character

By actually taking Sleepy Hollow and the Rip Van Winkle story, and finding the spirit of what was great about both of them and putting them together. So it felt, actually, like one of those ideas that clicked for us, right away, on instinct.

Alex Kurtzman

rip together ideas

We were such fans of Sleepy Hollow, in all of its iterations - growing up with the Disney show, and then Tim Burton's and, obviously, the most important being Washington Irving's short story. It evokes and invokes a very specific feeling and tone.

Alex Kurtzman

growing-up important feelings

When you start a script you aim to hit a note you know you want to end in general.

Alex Kurtzman

scripts ends want

I do believe that people go to the movies - for one reason or another - they go to the movies to have an experience.

Alex Kurtzman

reason believe people

I love the opportunity to tell the story about the characters through the music.

Alex Kurtzman

stories opportunity character

My house is basically like Halloween, 365 days a year, with my son.

Alex Kurtzman

year like house son

In one way or another, everybody has this experience in their lives... the moment when you have to define your relationship to family and how your family's made you who you are, whether you've spent your life running from your family or deeply connected to your family.

Alex Kurtzman

moment family relationship life

When I was a kid, going to Universal Studios, which was all I wanted to do, all the time, there was a show that was all the monsters, and I loved that show. I was obsessed with Dracula. I was obsessed with Frankenstein. I was obsessed with the Wolfman.

Alex Kurtzman

loved kid monsters time

I think that the line between television and features started to blur a couple years ago. The standards started to become the same, which is that the idea had to be very loud. The show didn't have to be loud; the idea had to be loud. It had to cut through the clutter.