Jason Bateman

Well, the first television writing gig came on Bones, yes?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're a writer-producer on that.

And then you start to create your own shows.

The Unusuals and My Generation were those two of the first?

Was it a difficult process to get the networks interested in your ideas?

I mean, were they receptive right away based on your time there on Bones?

Or was that kind of a tough transition into being a showrunner?

He's like, you guys are real geniuses.

Talk to us about how the directing thing started to come about and where did your confidence start to, when did your confidence start to grow for that?

Like asking for the wheel.

Did you find it... I think most people can read something or watch something, and from the comfort of their couch, the safety of their couch, they can say, oh, I would do this differently or I would do that differently.

And those are nine times out of ten really good ideas.

They're good catches.

They're good fixes.

Right.

But if you give them a blank page or you give them a screen with no image on it or, more pointedly, on a set, standing in front of a bunch of actors and some cameras and a cameraman,

knowing how to create from the ground up, you know, to put this thing into three dimensions.

Like, did you find that, that change in the process from just, from recutting stuff that's in front of you to actually creating it from the ground up on set?