Jack Valenti Quotes

'Y Tu Mama Tambien' is one of the first unrated movies to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. But many video stores won't take a movie that's not rated, so I had to make the movie an R.

I don't think an NC-17 rating is the kiss of death. Nor do I think that, in the hands of the right filmmakers, studios have a preconceived notion to pass on NC-17 material.

It was like fighting with the MPAA... to me it was like this is an R easy... but it was NC 17 over and over and even with this cut they were like, you are right on the edge buddy, one more thing and it's NC-17.

Should a story be readily told in a PG-13 fashion, it should be for creative, not business, reasons.

As a parent myself, I can appreciate the MPAA and what they're supposed to do, but what happens with NC-17 is that the MPAA is basically taking away the rights of parents. They're basically telling me that I can't show my kids this movie if I decide they can see it.

My father was just 9 when he started as a child actor in 'Afsana.'

The reason they came up with the ratings board is that there are a lot of movies out there, and parents need some guidance. Not only for the kids, but for adults, as well. If you don't like to see a certain kind of film, there should be some rating, so that you know what you're getting into. But the present system doesn't work.

I read someplace that I used to make B-pictures. Hell, they were a lot farther down the alphabet than that . . . but not as far down as R and X. I think any man who makes an X-rated picture ought to be made to take his own daughter to see it.

If you are not in the red playroom of pain and pleasure, … shooting the movie is much like doing any other movie.

It would be a crime against [Twilight] audience to go R-rated... [Yet the rating] is based on a much more mature book [Breaking Dawn,Stephenie Meyer]. We need to progress and be more sophisticated.

Rated R movies are few and far between, nowadays. We're all seeing less and less rated R movies, and less and less of them are being made.

I have no problems with the NC-17 rating. I want more NC-17 films. More adult cinema!

Oh, I get it, it's simple. PG means the hero gets the girl, 15 means that the villain gets the girl, and 18 means everybody gets the girl.

I feel like most horror films are made for teenagers about teenagers. I've done a couple of those horror films. There's nothing wrong with that but the older I get the more I starve for more adult material.

You can make a movie about anything, as long as it has a hook to hang the advertising on.

It was so embarrassing, everytime I see it, I blush. Imagine if you saw yourselves like that. It's one thing to get dressed up and do the movie star thing, but I mean, it's my job to be outside of that and it's not like I'm on the outside when they're all watching me. [About the famous car wash scene from One Night at McCool's]

We met in an airport in Las Vegas, Harrison Ford and I, and he said, "I just finished a movie called 42. I play Branch Rickey. There's this kid in it playing Jackie Robinson. I think it's a pretty good movie."

I do think there's a smaller audience that's looking for something that's a little more adult and a little more nuanced [than many Hollywood movies]. At the same time, I think everyone who's making movies hopes to appeal to the widest audience possible.

Lee Marvin was just the best. Just the best. And that was the beginning of a friendship that lasted until he died. And the same with Ernie Borgnine. You know, I went up there and did that movie [Emperor Of The North] with those guys, and I actually was with Ernie the night that he died.

It's my first sort of commercial attempt, but it made sense for me because I'm not that kind of guy and I'm not going to continue to do that kind of movie.

All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.

Vic Armstrong is, of course, a legend

Nothing can prep you for eight years of sex scenes in one day.

I have never seen it (Jaws 4) but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.

Of course, it's always complicated to shoot a sex scene.