I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have. ↗
And I'm auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I'm reading right now for a horror film, and I'm meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them. ↗
I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy. ↗