John Slattery Quotes

It's a roll of the dice in the movie business. I mean, every single movie is a roll of the dice. Any movie on paper could look like it's going to be fantastic. You know what I mean?

The movie business is a big gamble.

Film-making, in itself, is such a risky, costly-yet-uncertain business that despite being wealthy, 90 percent of people don't become producers.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I never know how successful a movie is going to be - when you make a movie you're always hoping for the best.

If someone puts up $100 million on a movie, they're gonna be concerned about whether they'll get it back. So they're not gonna make a movie about three girls, you know?

You can measure opportunity with the same yardstick that measures the risk involved. They go together.

There are so many people I know who could be the greatest film-maker but who will never get the chance to make a movie; it's all about what somebody is going to make back. There are not a lot of romantic ideas about making movies anymore.

Everything's a risk, by the way, these days. Every film you make is a risk. There's no guarantee.

We make a series of investments, some will pan out and some won't.

I'm prepared to take risks. And every movie that I do is a risk. No one knows what the movie is going out turn out like.

You know, making a movie is a collaborative effort and sometimes all the ingredients don't work out. I know that every now and again I am going to make a movie that won't work.

I put £150,000 into the stage production of Grease and have got back £1.5 million so far. It has been a fantastic success.

Any film you make is a crap shoot.

If we got $100 million dollars to make a movie, I don't know if we should be making a $100 million dollar movie our first time out.

If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.

I think one of the main reason's Rick Rosenthal and Whitewater PIctures decided to 'get in bed with me' on 'Fat Kid' was because I came in with a strong business plan as well as a creative vision on how to make the film.

If you want your film to be instantly green-lit, your first approach is not to go to a relatively unknown English actor. They're not going to throw millions of dollars at you for that.

I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.

Well, the studios don't really want to take those risks right off the bat. They'll take the risk after they've seen the finished product and say oh yeah we want that. This is a great film but they are hesitant to take the risk when you just see it on paper.

Making movies is just like betting on horses at the racetrack.

My whole life has been about risk and reward.

When you do bigger films, the financiers take more risks.

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.