"No, the seventies was a totally different sensibility and that allowed us to break new ground as a cop show"
About this Quote
The little word "No" does a lot of work here: it’s a gentle correction aimed at anyone trying to retrofit a later, slicker idea of TV onto what Paul M. Glaser remembers as a looser, risk-friendlier moment. By framing the 1970s as a "totally different sensibility", he’s not just time-stamping a decade; he’s arguing that creative breakthroughs are often less about individual genius than about the cultural weather that makes certain risks feel acceptable.
As an actor speaking about a cop show, Glaser is also quietly defending a genre with baggage. "Cop show" can sound formulaic or politically loaded now, but in the 70s it could be a vehicle for experimentation: more location shooting, grittier textures, antihero ambiguity, and an appetite for stories that acknowledged social friction rather than hiding it behind tidy morality. His phrase "allowed us" points to institutional permission as much as artistic drive - networks, audiences, and even censorship norms shifting enough to give creators room to test boundaries.
The subtext is a kind of preemptive rebuttal to modern hindsight. Today, policing narratives are interrogated for what they normalize; Glaser’s line implies that back then the project felt like disruption, not endorsement. "Break new ground" becomes both pride and plea: judge the work inside its moment, when the rules were still being written and the genre hadn’t yet calcified into a set of predictable moves.
As an actor speaking about a cop show, Glaser is also quietly defending a genre with baggage. "Cop show" can sound formulaic or politically loaded now, but in the 70s it could be a vehicle for experimentation: more location shooting, grittier textures, antihero ambiguity, and an appetite for stories that acknowledged social friction rather than hiding it behind tidy morality. His phrase "allowed us" points to institutional permission as much as artistic drive - networks, audiences, and even censorship norms shifting enough to give creators room to test boundaries.
The subtext is a kind of preemptive rebuttal to modern hindsight. Today, policing narratives are interrogated for what they normalize; Glaser’s line implies that back then the project felt like disruption, not endorsement. "Break new ground" becomes both pride and plea: judge the work inside its moment, when the rules were still being written and the genre hadn’t yet calcified into a set of predictable moves.
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