Peter Bart Quotes

In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

There's no great technical expertise in being a movie producer.

You need names to get the movie made.

You always worry about films when you hear about them making decisions after announcements are made.

The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea you could possibly do something, but there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that it could get made.

They're talking about a movie I don't want to hold to that because in this business you can talk about things for years before they get done - god knows if the financing would happen.

On 'Platoon' I was offered in 1984 a very tiny part that Ivan Kane would go on to play. Then the financing fell out, and the film was scuttled for two years.

Anyone who knows me knows my mom, Dorcina, has to sign off on any decision and that she will play a major part in any decision.

I was familiar with 'Addicted' for a long time, even prior to the movie, way before it got the greenlight. And when it finally got the greenlight, I was very happy to be a part of it.

The success of 'The Fighter' made it a lot easier to get 'Broken City' green-lit. And the buzz about 'The Fighter' also made it a lot easier to get 'Contraband' green-lit.

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

The typical output deal from a studio is 10 to 14 movies a year.

I had a tough time 12 years ago getting 'Driving Miss Daisy' off the ground. Today, it would be impossible.

Movies are very hard to make, to get it all to come together. So many people have their say in what the end product of films are.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

Any movie I've ever made, the minute you walk on the set they tell you who's the person to buy it from.

The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.

Trying to convince Warner Bros. to make a $30 million 'Veronica Mars' movie just wasn't going to happen, for understandable reasons.

I find it quite difficult on studio films because there are so many different executives and things like that that you have to go through, so very often getting that definitive opinion is actually quite difficult.

The green-light decision process today consists of maybe of 30 or 40 people.

It's a good time to be making movies, despite the cynicism people have about Hollywood.

We shot ten minutes of the movie, and now we're looking for completion funds.