Real Sex
Attitudes toward sexuality have been profoundly affected by this show. The transformation in what people will talk about openly-from our first show in 1990 to the year 2002-is amazing. Even the people on the street are so free in what…
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Putting HBO on the TV movie map
“Shot in the Heart” may not have been much of a movie, but “Shot Through the Heart” was tough and powerful. Although “Citizen X” didn’t exactly sear itself into memory, “Citizen Cohn” proved a potent potboiler.And although “Mussolini” flopped, “Stalin”…
Sex and the City
[When I had the idea for the show I spoke to Jamie Tarses, then an ABC programmer.] My question to her was, “Could you even call it `’ on ABC?” [Later I spoke to Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss at…
Dream On
Marta Kauffman: We were encouraged to do what you couldn’t do on network TV. It wasn’t so much about language and sex as much as the way you could tell a story. For instance, we could do a story where…
1st & Ten
I was a big football fan and I got to have a team that had all of the stars in the league. The show had wonderful actors and actresses, and it was filmed in a very unique way. Because of…
Arli$$
[HBO is] out for the best product going. They encourage you and they totally leave you alone creatively. I haven’t seen an HBO executive in five years. I get notes occasionally, but they are always just suggestions. The lack of…
The Hitchhiker
Standard TV was hierarchical at this time. It would have been almost impossible for a young producer like me to gain access to mainstream TV. But the leadership at HBO wanted to create differentiated programming so they reached out to…
The New Television: Malone again, naturally
Has John Malone pulled a fast one?Through a series of complex maneuvers, Liberty Media-of which Malone is CEO-recently took control of three interactive TV companies for the price of one. The moves were so blinding that one shareholder has charged…
The Sopranos
I find myself working harder than I ever did before. I’ve been a show runner once before, but that was with my own show and it was very short-lived. This has been a change for me-seeing how many people depend…
Not marketing TV, marketing HBO
Let’s start with the tagline. In the history of cable TV, two memorable taglines stand out. One is, “I Want My MTV.” The other is, “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”The latter, which came from HBO’s ad agency BBDO Worldwide, is…