"We're living in a time that's just become judgmental and everybody wants to see failure," Thornton says. "They want to see people knocked off the hill. You can't have a television show without a competition because they want to see who cries this week and who goes downhill, who gets kicked out."
Thornton's case in point: The Food Network's "Cupcake Wars." "We don't need one show about cupcakes, as far as I’m concerned, but you know what, if you want one -- okay, that's fine," he says. "Let's have a show about cupcakes. But does it have to be a f****** competition? Do you have to have cupcake wars? And I’m sure people who have been in war kind of take offense to that because seriously, it's not that g****** dangerous to make a cupcake."
"I guess I’m just really ready for people to kind of settle down and know each other again and root for each other as opposed to look for the faults in each other," Thornton says.
Thornton muses that maybe that's why in his films, the stories he writes take place in other times and places. "There's a lot of great stuff in life from the top to the bottom and from the left to the right," he says. "Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic."
"Oprah's Master Class" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on OWN.
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