Peter Bart Quotes

It's not about 'NBC is evil.' It's about that media structure - CBS, ABC, CNN, even some of the smaller operations are now multinationals, with these extraordinarily diverse holdings.

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It's gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it's natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it's how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period.

The thing about TV is it's a meritocracy. I love that aspect of it - and I've had shows that have gone on the air and been canceled. I've seen the good and the bad of it.

There are so many people in film and television that get between a performer and the audience, and that's frustrating.

My first introduction to television, and really just the business in general, was working with David Lynch, with his incredibly open, creative mind that was not following any rules. I didn't know it, because I hadn't been in the business.

I love TV and film and will happily work there if it's good. But I want the ability to choose between things, to have options.

There's so much great TV and I always thought it would be such a fun little sideway to make money and then not have to worry about my films making a lot of money.

Some people have made a fortune by being employed. Jerry Bruckheimer does not own his content. Warner Bros. owns his shows. They are on CBS, and he makes a fortune.

The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.

The biggest danger of Hollywood becoming a purely corporate town resides in the creative process.

I think the Internet's been a tremendous tool in terms of breaking down the power structure of information and entertainment, particularly at a time when so much information and entertainment were in the hands of so few people, with multinationals owning everything.

Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'

I don't want to be owned by a corporation and obliged to make a certain type of album. I want to be free.

The most frustrating part of working in TV and film is that you have to convince someone to let you make what you want; in comics you can do whatever you want and for 1% of the budget of TV and film.

The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.

It used to be you did TV or you did film. Now it's like a media blitz.

I think you just have to take everything that happens on a TV show with a grain of salt. You sign up for a show for six years having zero idea where they're going to go with the character, so you just have to get on the ride of the show and go with wherever they take you.

The corporation and the hedge funds have a hold on Hollywood, and they all want to make money on anything that signifies cinema.

I don't make movies because I think audiences will want to go see them.

More than half the world's largest 100 economies are corporations. They have no loyalties to place or citizens.

The only pitch I have to movie people is the same as this one: Just give me $8 million. I'm not telling you what it's about and I'm not telling you who's in it.

Everybody knows things are not the same. The people running the TV end of a major vertically integrated company know how much money a successful show can make.

Things have changed a great deal since the days of Mr. Mayer. The studios no longer control, as they did in those days, artists or directors or producers, as the case may be.

One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations ... The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation.