Bryan Fuller
I'm incredibly proud of 'Hannibal' and the cast - I feel like we're doing really good television.
I was such a huge fan of 'The X-Files.'
I got into writing to become a 'Star Trek' writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to.
I read 'Red Dragon' back in high school. I love Thomas Harris' approach to the crime thriller that crossed over into horror in a way that nobody really tapped into.
I felt, selfishly, that if there was going to be a TV show about 'Hannibal Lecter' whether I was going to be involved or not, I'd rather be involved. I wanted to make sure it was something I wanted to watch.
For me, nudity and strong language have never been huge loadbearing elements of how I like to tell a story. Graphic images certainly are.
I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion.
I only eat meat if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I'm at somebody's home for a dinner, I'll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don't eat anything that walks around and has a face.
If I go to your home, and you're cooking me a meal, I will eat whatever you put in front of me.
With land-roaming animals, I've just read so much about the sophistication of their emotional lives and their intelligence and the way they process information that betrays a greater intelligence.
If somebody is mean or rude, I just, I don't engage - just block and say, 'Well, that's not very polite.'
I think one of the things that was a huge surprise to everyone with 'Silence of the Lambs' was that that was an Oscar-winning horror movie. It struck such a nerve with audiences that it was a very particular, special experience.
If you're trying to make a recipe that you're not even going to bother tasting, you're doing something wrong.
When you are developing something, you have to look at it individually. You can't compare and contrast it to the projects around it, because that way madness lies.
One of the things that's important for anybody adapting source material that is primarily a male buddy picture is to find ways to latch on to strong female characters in the piece and bring them to the forefront and celebrate their point of view alongside the men; otherwise, it becomes a sausage party, and it's a singular point of view.
The more real the murder is, the less interested I am in seeing it. It's hard enough to watch the news.
If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. Where if you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things.
Upfronts are all about ad sales.
I like working, and my brain sort of keeps going whether I like it or not.
I love actors, and I love the casting process. It's funny, like, some writers don't like actors because, I think, they are the faces of the show, and so you feel sort of secondary, but I love actors because they elevate the material; they make it better.
What was always interesting about Thomas Harris' books is they were a wonderful hybridization of a crime thriller and a horror movie.
People who have passion for horror stories, their appreciation/my appreciation is looking at it as opera.
Horror films have always been quite operatic for me. I always sort of scratch my head at people's offense to them? If you don't get them, and you don't like them, then don't watch them.
In junior high I read a lot of Stephen King, whose Americana approach to writing was often about "the terror next door" and at the same time I was reading a lot of Clive Barker, who was on the other end of the horror pendulum: insidious and disturbingly psychological. I found it fascinating how these two authors came at horror from two totally different perspectives.Collection: Kings
I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.Collection: Kissing
I'm not always successful, but I take my job as a storyteller very seriously and want to make sure the audience has as much fun watching it as I am creating it.Collection: Jobs
I think you have to write what you want to watch.Collection: Writing
Anybody who is capable of doing terrible things, you don't want them out in the world, but you can't help but respect their ingenuity and their savvy and their intelligence as they go about their dastardly deeds.Collection: World
Television production is so insane. There's so many moving parts and flying pieces and you're desperate to make it cohesive and artistic and have something to say about the human condition that feels like it has value to its existence.Collection: Moving
As an insecure writer, I'll finish a scene and worry there's a better version of it. Or it could be elevated somehow.Collection: Insecure
You can't measure a dog's intelligence by giving him a verbal test 'cause it's not on their scale, but that doesn't mean they're not intelligent creatures.Collection: Dog
I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.Collection: Sweet
The idea of suggesting that Hannibal Lecter - in the book, he has a sixth finger and red eyes, and so there is a devilry in Thomas Harris' presentation - so it felt like it was completely honest and appropriate for the character. And we often talk in the writers' room, "Okay, there is the Hannibal as the devil explanation of that plot point, but we also need to ground that in a reality that is answerable to the physics of the storytelling."Collection: Book
I'm probably harder on myself than I need to be, but it's important to me if I'm going to ask an audience for an hour of their time that I don't waste their time. I want to give them something significant to chew on.Collection: Giving
As a horror movie fan, I was very obsessed with horror films. Still am. I love the genre. For me, horror films are opera, and they are... instead of consumption killing off the young lovers, it's Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. It is when the stakes are at their absolute largest in a story: whether somebody is going to live or die. In a way, it's just holding up a mirror to life.Collection: Mirrors
One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.Collection: Animal
I'm always looking for the idea in a scene or the philosophy that makes a scene worth existing beyond exposition.Collection: Philosophy
The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.Collection: Mistake
I love that India has declared dolphins non-human people with all laws that apply to human. I'm fascinated with the alien-ness of that.Collection: Law
I do love animals so much, and have a great respect for them emotionally and intellectually, because they are so different from human beings.Collection: Animal
I love the supernatural in storytelling. The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on me, in terms of writing and storytelling, where you're not restricted to the parameters of reality to tell your tale.Collection: Twilight
We only really, deeply consider what our life is when we're faced with mortality on some level.Collection: Levels
I think accessibility is what often denies horror its deserved attention. So it all depends on the execution and whether mainstream audiences can accept it.Collection: Thinking
I think there's often a negative associated with being passionate or geeky about entertainment, but for me, entertainment has always been a greater, psychological escape, so I think it's unfortunate when others don't appreciate the depth of passion entertainment offers.Collection: Passion
We're looking at a lot of race cars as inspiration for our starships. It's wonderful. It's surreal. I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be a Star Trek writer, so to be able to craft a new iteration of the show with new characters and a whole new adventure and whole new way of telling stories that you haven't been able to tell on Star Trek is honorable and it's a dream come true. It's hard to articulate that.Collection: Dream
That's just me wanting that supernatural tool to tell a story and also not wanting to be restricted by reality, with how we're telling a tale, because we are a heightened reality on Hannibal. There is a larger-than-life quality to the storytelling when it gets into particulars. I like the idea of being able to dismiss reality, depending on if we can sell it as part of the story.Collection: Reality
If you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things. You're not really honoring the life.Collection: Mcdonalds
I went to school to be a psychiatrist. That's where I was going until I had a teacher-student conference with one of my teachers and there were film school pamphlets, and he said, "You don't belong here. Get out. Go to film school."Collection: Teacher
Hannibal is very much a secular story, even though we dance right up to the supernatural a few times in the show, and, arguably, you could say we dipped our toe in an instance or two.Collection: Two
I think because it is a very well-saturated story,episode of Justified in Hannibal, and we've all heard it in some frame of a story, we've heard the urban legend of waking up in a bathtub with a kidney missing. It felt like if we are telling an organ-harvesting story, it was really about quickly selling the iconography of an organ-harvesting story, and then being able to mask that as a perfect way for Hannibal Lecter to go shopping for his menu.Collection: Thinking