Beau Willimon
Beau Willimon
Pack Beauregard "Beau" Willimonis an American playwright and screenwriter. He is the creator of the Netflix original series House of Cards and served as showrunner for the first four seasons...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth1 August 1975
CountryUnited States of America
dark lights political portray time turn
The political world is a dark place. If you want to portray it accurately, authentically, you've got to turn out the lights from time to time.
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Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.
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You always want to try, in everything you do, to attempt something you've never tried before, and the only way to succeed at that is through failure, and the only way to succeed through failure is just banging your head against the wall over and over until you get to that interesting thing on the other side.
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The press don't wake up in the morning simply to be a mouthpiece for pols - they're out to uncover and expose news. That often is at odds with what politicians are setting out to do - it's both symbiotic and antagonistic. They need each other, they work in concert with one another, they work against one another.
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I don't desire happiness. I think it's a myth, and I don't think it's... and it makes you complacent. I feel very satisfyingly uncomfortable. I have the freedom to feel uncomfortable in the way I want to, is maybe a way to put it.
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Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.
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Like any young person who gets into a political campaign, I joined out of a highfalutin' desire to change the world. But you start to see the sort of tactics people use. You start to see politics not only in the macro but in the micro of the campaign itself. Some people get turned off by this side of it. Other people are drawn to it.
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Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability.
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I think, people who remain in the political sphere as opposed to going into the private sector, really what they're looking at is how in some ways the compensation is power. How do you place a price tag on the ability to affect millions of people's lives? How do you place a price tag on the ability to determine the rules by which all of us play?
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If you really think that ambition, power, lust, desire are not as applicable in the media as in politics or on Wall Street or anywhere else, you're deluding yourself.
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A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
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This is the way I think about politics: We want two diametrically opposed things from a politician. On one hand we want them to be bastions of moral integrity, perfect people, saints. And on the other hand, we want them to be effective leaders.
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People in D.C. are so psyched when anyone dramatizes them in an exciting way. They're a lot more open to looking at the nastier side of themselves than the media is.