Steven Johnson

The Apprentice may not be the smartest show in the history of television, but it nonetheless forces you to think while you watch it, to work through the social logic of the universe it creates on screen. And compared with The Price is Right or Webster, it’s an intellectual masterpiece.

Steven Johnson, in Everything Bad is Good for You, page 99 of the Riverhead hardcover edition.

I guess my mindset about movies is that I feel like film is a dead medium. With theatre you’ve got accidents that can happen, performances that can change. But film is a recording. So what I try to do is infuse my screenplays with enough information that upon repeated viewings you can have a different experience. Rather than the movie going linearly to one thing, and at the end telling you what the movie’s about – I try to create a conversation with the audience. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do – have a conversation with each individual member of the audience.

Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, quoted in Steven Johnson’s book, page 164.