Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Producers - Page 20

The thing I find really scary about ghosts and demons is that you don't really know what they are or where they are. They're not very well understood. You don't know what they want from you. So it's the kind of thing you don't even know how to defend yourself against. Anything that's unknown and mysterious is very scary.

The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering.

If you're an aspiring show maker, and you have the means to sit around for a few months, you should be making funny cartoons and uploading them to the internet.

Sometimes you feel all alone. You come out of a meeting, and something sexist has been said to you: That movie will never be made with that female lead. And you think, 'How am I ever gonna get another job?' When you hear other women having the same experiences, it makes you feel like, 'Well, I'm gonna keep going, and we're gonna fight this system.'

In my world, the hero always defeats the villain, the boy always gets the girl, and cancer is no more.

The entertainment business is and always has been about money, and it's about, 'Does that person merit that salary?' The fact is that that the business, in my view, has been somewhat bankrupt for years - only the new media made it viable.

Maybe I should disappear and not make anymore music. I mean, I think I'd take it really badly if I got slayed.

It's expensive to produce musicals on television.

You can shoot and edit a movie from your iPhone and upload it to YouTube. Of course, what's not universal is talent. Are you making anything that anyone really should see?

There's a difference between a beatmaker and a producer.

At a certain point you have to make a decision in your life about where will you best serve, and I decided that I would best serve as a producer as opposed to a studio executive. There are many upsides to being the studio executive, but one of the downsides is that you get removed from the actual process of making the movie.

Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.

The remarkable thing about 9/11 was that journalism pretty much put down its badges. People didn't worry about reacting as human beings. People who weren't reporters reported. David Letterman was sort of a brilliant reporter for a second - but it was a way nobody had ever covered a story. They just presented what was inside themselves.

I was very focused, driven, rigid, work-oriented. I didn't care about having a family or making a home. I didn't think about kids. It's not that I didn't want those things, I just didn't think about them. And then I had someone who came in as a tornado, this creative, beautiful ball of insane energy and passion. And it completely opened me up.

I think that our primary concern is that the membership in our industry become active. I'm not talking about the candidates being active. I'm talking about the few hundred thousand people who work in the industry around the United States.

Patriotism cannot be instilled inside anybody, it just happens to be there. And it can rise above any notion, any emotion.

I remember very clearly when my dad first subscribed to HBO - 'Fraggle Rock' was a gamechanger.

I feel more meditative when I don't have a home. I like being put into a new place and making friends with people from a different culture, trying to find the lines of communication. It's a lot of reflection of myself and seeing new scenery.

There's no such thing as the greatest album ever. There's no greatest book, greatest human, greatest movie. At a push, the closest record to perfection I know is What's Going On by Marvin Gaye or The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds but possibly because they are widely recognized as such.

I grew up on the Bond movies. The first one I saw was 'Diamonds Are Forever,' when I was a kid. I just loved them to pieces.

'Reno' was originally going to be a sketch show, with the cops as a transitional element.

No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a good idea after it's done.

'The September Issue' is really a film about Anna Wintour's relationship with long time 'Vogue' Creative Director Grace Coddington. The two of them have been working together for two decades, and the extraordinary symbiosis between them has left an indelible mark on the fashion industry.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

I haven't read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

I am the kind of person that takes everything as is and then look at it from the outside looking in.

I think a lot of times people look at me and say, 'Well, we can't possibly hand a show over to her to run.' It seemed like executives would be worried about me controlling a room and having power, and I'd say, 'Oh, I can control a room. I can give an order like nobody's business.'

For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.

If the studio wants to spend money on making your movie better, let them.

The Gong Show was the greatest scam of all time. It was simple: We wanted to do a talent show. There weren't any venues for acts back then. We were gonna have a show of new, fresh, good acts. But we couldn't find any; they were all lousy. So rather than throw away the idea, I said, "Let's reverse it. Let's do lousy acts." Now, is that a scam? I'm telling you.

Thankfully, as much as Hollywood is interested in brands, I think people are still looking for originality and freshness.

The catch in the industry is that if you want to get a picture made for little money, you have to get a big star. But the two are usually mutually exclusive.

I came to L.A. in 1970, and my desire and my training was to be a studio musician, which I had read about in my senior year in high school.

There's nothing more important than having a personal connection with your audience.

I've always wanted to travel. My mom was a geography queen, I knew the atlas, and I looked at her pictures of all her world travels because she traveled a lot before I was born, with my brother. I was always so jealous. I kind of chose a job that would be a way I could see the world without having to pay for it. I'm not going to be a flight attendant. I'm way too busy to be that.

It took me a good two-and-a-half to three years to write 'Dhobi Ghat' and more importantly be satisfied with it.

I'm a huge historical fiction and non-fiction fan.

I knew I needed to workout for my sanity, and I try and make it a daily habit if I can, so I count myself very lucky that I have been able to keep doing that while pregnant.

Although we are busy with our own work, we still try and spend time together. At the same time, we give each other space. I think that is the key to a successful marriage.

You have the greatest chance of being happy when the voice you respond to is your own voice.

I may have been in financial difficulties, but I'm not a pauper.

We were going to do 'Reno 911!: New York, New York, Las Vegas,' which was like a 'Die Hard' set not in New York, but in the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. We were really excited about being locked into the one casino and doing a bad action movie.

Whether it's running for president or trying to win an Oscar, campaigning is a must and relationships are a big part of that. It's about who you know to rally behind you.

I believe doctors and scientists who say that disruption of our immune system by negative energy makes you prone to diseases of which cancer is one. That is a medical fact.

A lot of my films have dealt with the dark side of technology and stress that you have to examine the ramifications of progress.

Nothing is perfect. Therefore, being perfect is being nothing… and that's a great way to lose weight.

Novelty is always welcome but talking pictures are just a fad.

You exist in the minds of other people.

The perfect expression of receiving a lifetime award is to be working when they're handing it out.

I think that every enduring story that has expressions over multiple periods, that role of being the keeper of the integrity of the vision is a very important role.

There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.

I went to a Catholic high school and it seemed like every time I drew something for a class project, it either got thrown away by the teacher or something.

I could never do a show, or be a personality like Howard Stern, where you take all that heat from critics. What he does, he does, but the critical heat would crucify me.

My father believed strongly, and taught me, that you can't let yourself get too high on a success or too low on a failure. In this volatile business, that's useful to know.

By definition a sequel can't be original. So you've got to figure out what worked the first time around.

My proudest accomplishment is my daughter Ella. Because she is a great person, great personality. She not really my accomplishment, she is her own, but I had something to do with it.

When you're telling a story, the best stories, every character has an arc. Every one. And that arc is usually about finding yourself, or about at least finding something about yourself that you didn't know.

Certainly there's got to be a little bit of reality show fatigue happening.

We found the appetite for 'Frontline' has only grown as the digital landscape has exploded. The appetite for the reporting we do on our digital platforms to the short films we're doing for our Facebook and YouTube channels. And we're still producing these remarkable long-form films.

I'm really excited about breaking new acts. While I'm trying to preserve the culture and make sure I fight for the acts that the major labels have thrown away, you can't throw away Musiq Soulchild, Kelly Price and Jon B.