Ricky Van Veen Quotes

Hollywood has lost touch with their audience a long time ago.

Radio has always been a niche business. Cable television has always been a niche business. Magazines have always been a niche business.

I love the urban comedies, because they keep you famous, keep you having fun, and keep you in love with the business. Those are my roots. I'll always love doing those.

I think audiences ultimately want something new. I think the business model for a franchise is such that it's very low risk because you have data and studios love data.

It's too bad that there aren't as many light comedies around in the movies as there were when I was making pictures like 'The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.' The boys are just not writing them. Many writers are more serious now than they used to be, and that's showing up in all phases of entertainment.

I'm interested not just in projects that I'll be starring in, but producing film and TV that's really quality and great for adults; and when I say 'great for adults,' it doesn't mean without humor, because I'm also interested in doing comedy.

I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.

I was lucky to start working when German cinema was having an interesting moment. Now the quality is going downhill again because they're insisting on doing comedies. We should know by now that we make good cars but we're not the funniest people.

People really love 'Madea' movies and get a kick out of them. They're phenomenally successful. People get excited when a new one's coming out.

It's hard to really get that excited about movies. Think about it like this: how many good comedy movies come out a year? Maybe one or two? And then, in those movies, what are the chances that there's a character that I'm the best fit to play? It's really small!

The landscape is television has changed so much, because there are so many outlets, that the odds of getting a zeitgeisty hit - you know how 'American Idol' seems to appeal to every human being on the planet? Doing that in comedy nowadays is very, very hard.

The best businesses that all of us have in the entertainment business are cable content channels, which have a dual revenue stream.

It's just so hard to get movies made, especially comedies.

I love doing comedy. Absolutely love it. After 'Wedding Crashers,' people suddenly realized that it was something I could do.

I have done many comedy films. Success of films like 'Partner,' 'Singh is Kinng' gets you to a very wide audience reach. But for greater gains, you need to take greater gambles. If it works, you get respect and recognition.

I've ended up spending more time in front of a camera than on stage, but the stage is where I come from.

It's show business. No show, no business.

The challenges are different to different kinds of magazines. News magazines, magazines that have high frequency and news, are going to be challenged, heavily challenged, not just by the Internet but by the whole 24-hour news cycle which has just been getting enhanced.

I care deeply about journalism, but we need to be a business.

These days, it's perfectly normal to move between the theatre and television.

It's called show business for a reason. The theater owners want to make money, and understandably so.

We want to be a consolidator, not a seller, and we want to continue to explore the kind of targeted entertainment, targeted audiences, that I think are happening and emerging in every country in the world.

My goal isn't just to make wrestling into a bigger show and make good money, but it's also to evolve pro wrestling to where I think it belongs.

It was a deliberate decision to act in family entertainers like 'Govindudu Andari Vadele' and 'Bruce Lee.'

It's not enough just to put great television shows out anymore.