Alex Graves

I never seem to get past - I feel like a stupid guy from the Midwest. ”

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then. ”

The hardest part of 'Game of Thrones' is there is so much incredible talent bouncing off the walls that you'll actually miss some of them, and not getting it is very intimidating. ”

Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings. ”

I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director. ”

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could. ”

Terra Nova,' more than anything I've ever done in my life, is for everybody. ”

Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script. ”

For someone making a pilot, assuming the talent is there and you can maneuver the system properly, it's just a matter of standing your ground and trying to make something great until you are making enough money for the studio that they let you keep making it. ”

Proof' is a really cool pilot that I was lucky enough to read by Rob Braggin for TNT that's about a surgeon who's an agnostic, tough, grounded, scientific mind and she's hired by a Steve Jobs-type who's just been diagnosed with cancer to focus on near death experiences and what happens when you die. ”