20th-century Film Producer Quotes

Politics is the means by which the will of the few becomes the will of the many.

WE ARE ALL TRAPPED in our own way of thinking, trapped in our own way of relating to people. We get so used to seeing the world our way that we come to think that the world is the way we see it.

Don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don't think it'd understand.

Billy Ray Cyrus

Cornered
by identities I never wanted to claim,
I ran.
Fast.
Hard
Deep
Inside myself.

Because I'm fat, people believe I'm somehow vulnerable and easy to handle in a negotiation. Ever try to negotiate with a fat guy? We can be mean: Marvin Davis, Harvey Weinstein, Hermann Goering. No one screws around with us for long.

Bernie Brillstein

My background in music came from me playing drums and piano as a young child. My grandmother was a pianist and I was influenced by her and my parents were playing rock records which influenced my drumming. I was a fan of film scores, rock, classical, jazz, and hip-hop in my early years and tried to learn as much about each of those genres as possible. I began writing music in a serious way in my teen years while I was playing in various bands and orchestras.

Victory always starts in the head. It's a state of mind. It then spreads with such radiance and such affirmations that destiny can do nothing but obey.

Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

Of Cate Blanchett:

As an actor, you either work off your own personality, and that's what you're peddling, or, like Cate, you draw out from the source material all the many dark, mysterious, and conflicting elements of the character that are going to make it engaging and trilling for the audience.

If Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, you know for sure the entire 100 million cans would be dropped in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, without a second thought and irrespective of what that did to the year's profits. What do we do with a crappy movie? We double its advertising budget and hope for a big opening weekend. What have we done for the audience as they walk out of the cinema? We've alienated them. We've sold audiences a piece of junk; we just took twelve dollars away from a couple and we think we've done ourselves no long-term damage.

With all these tentpoles, franchises, reboots and sequels, is there still room for movies in the movie business?

Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I'd give it my best shot.

If there ever was a time for sentimentality and traditional merrymaking, one that has transcended religious orientation, Christmas must be that time. The effect seems salutary: even people who ordinarily are as colorful and gay as groundworms, who would dare not consider a flamboyant gesture, hang long strings of brightly colored lights around their houses, trim Christmas trees, and talk to strangers.

Do you know the famous last words of the Fatted Calf? 'I hear the young master has returned.'

Monja Danischewsky

A film in which the speech and sound effects are perfectly synchronized and coincide with their visual image on the screen is absolutely contrary to the aims of cinema. It is a degenerate and misguided attempt to destroy the real use of the film and cannot be accepted as coming within the true boundaries of the cinema.

Hate wears you down and doesn't hurt your enemy. It's like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die.

Hollywood is a place that attracts people with massive holes in their souls.

The dream — you never achieve it. The excitement of life lies in the hope, in the striving for something rather than the attainment.

Barbra Streisand

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted. I simply do not like to show my weakness, and I hate to lose, so I am a person who tries hard. That's all there is to me.

Anything but Beethoven. Nobody wants to see a movie about a blind composer.

If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is unnecessary. If they disagree all the time, then both are useless.

Darryl F. Zanuck

There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

I don't like the new trends in horror. All this torture stuff seems really mean-spirited. People have forgotten how to laugh, and I don't see anybody who's using it as allegory. The guy I love right now is Guillermo del Toro. I'd love to make a film like Pan's Labyrinth.

George A. Romero

I find celebrity status difficult to bear when I am in the company of my mother.