Craig Mazin Quotes

My personal belief is that there’s not much value in showing things from the past that have no relevance to today or failing to connect some kind of dotted line to where we are today, because otherwise, it just becomes homework.

Governments are different, and philosophies are different, but when it comes down to it, a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher. A butcher is a butcher is a butcher. We are people. And we are far more common than we ever imagine.

At some point, and maybe it’s a function of age, you‘ve had enough of it. You start to slide in other directions. A lot of comedy writers begin to turn the dial. With me, it was a switch. Comedy off. Drama on.

For me, I’ve been doing comedy for a long time, and I love it and have no regrets, but ‘Chernobyl’ expresses a side of me that is far more true to who I am on a day to day basis.

The strange rejection of the expert is mind boggling to me. When we’re told that the worst word in politics is ‘elite,’ I have to wonder whom else are we supposed to be rooting for if not the most qualified and smart and informed people?

When you’re writing a feature film, the moment you begin Page 1, you are in a sweat that you’re running out of pages.

When you look at the history of slavery in the United States, and you see the impact that ‘Uncle Tom‘s Cabin‘ had, culture sometimes is the only way that we can put people’s eyes on an emotional truth and make them feel why something has to change.

I am eternally impressed and amazed by what directors do.

There are the movies that should never be made and resist being made until, through sheer brute force, somebody finally makes it. And then, there are the movies you can’t stop from being made because they just want to be made.

Of all the bad things Internet has done for us, one of the good things is exposing us to people that were our neighbors, and now we’re at happy to ask questions about things that we were otherwise willing to just walk by and not notice.

If you organize your life around some political party‘s list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay.

This is in us: a certain sense of denial, a certain sense of groupthink. This is not something that sits on one party line or the other. We’ve seen it in all permutations throughout history, and at the core of it is a certain insistence that what we want to be true is now true, and what we don’t like is now false.

I try my best to live by the principle that if you’re going to be telling a story that you didn’t live, tell it with as much respect as you can for the people who did live it.

‘Chernobyl’ is a human story. It’s not a disaster movie. It’s not about explosions. It’s about people and truths and lies.

The Soviet State had never made radiation something that was publicized in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the Soviet Union had experienced a number of serious accidents involving radiation since the 1950s and had covered it up a number of times.

What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth.

The planet is heating; the climate is changing. We know this. We have not just one scientist, or two, but thousands screaming this at us at the top of their lungs. And we have a government full of disinterested, stubborn people who are going to cling to their denial and their nonsense.

I was 15 when Chernobyl happened, I’ve been vaguely thinking about it for most of my life. But somewhere around 2015, it occurred to me that I didn’t know how it happened, which seemed like a pretty bizarre lapse in my understanding of the world and how it functions.

Comedy, unlike drama, demands surprise. You can’t quietly and thoughtfully enjoy a comedy.

I’ve always had this fascination with the brain. I’m not really much of a religious person, but like anybody, you are at least fascinated by what some call a soul – what I would call the brain – and who we are and how we work.

‘Law & Order‘ has the same plot every single episode.

I grew up on lovely Staten Island, which is the forgotten borough of New York City.

I really hate people that spoil stuff by putting scripts online. I don’t mind so much people that do movie spoilers when the movie is out in the theater. If you haven‘t gotten there the first weekend, it’s on you to not read reviews or anything. But to put up screenplay reviews just kills me.

When I’m writing stuff, I need to watch the scene in my head, like a little movie, or else it just feels stupid. It just feels very written. There are things that actors do and faces they make and pauses they take and their rhythms. You need that.

Basically, the last 30 minutes of ‘Goodfellas,’ that was my neighborhood… literally. There were people on my street who did nothing but just wash their car all day and wait for a package, and that’s what I thought being an adult was.