Lynn Nottage Quotes

The modern economics of the theater is such that we write plays with fewer and fewer characters.

Maybe there are too many restaurants. Maybe some of mine need to close. So be it. I'll live with the market place.

I'm not tied to budgets. I'm tied to the story that I want to tell, and how much it's going to cost is up to whatever the economic situation of the studio is.

Even on a $100 million film, people will complain that they haven't got enough money and enough time, so that's always going to be an element in filmmaking.

When you're working with a smaller budget I suppose one of the things that has to be in your mind when you are writing is that you have to keep the characters down to a minimum.

The economy made me focus on designing more must-haves.

It's one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.

Any business owner can tell you that if their company isn't performing profitably and up to standards, one of two things will happen: either you make changes to improve its efficiency, or a competitor will drive you out of business. Market forces have a way of cutting to the chase rather quickly.

First, we have to lower our costs to levels that are more competitive. This will prevent the lower-cost airlines from pushing us out of the markets we want to serve. We've made great progress on this front, but we need to keep pushing.

Hollywood is going to have to find a way of meeting those profit goals.

Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.

I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television.

In a movie, you have to be mindful that no budget is going to be able to deal with running around the globe at every whim of the writer.

Business, unfortunately, isn't all sunshine and lollipops.

The suggestion that we were pursuing consolidation as a replacement for reaching our financial targets by 2018 is fundamentally a bunch of hogwash.

If you have a business that isn't growing the top line, it's very hard to deliver attractive returns to shareholders.

I never think about the budget of the film.

Retail businesses have narrow margins. If you cut off a flow of young consumers, it's only a matter of time before the businesses struggle and fail.

If you have to make a story in 10 rupees or you know that at this stage you can get only 10 rupees then you cut down on your expenses. But when one has made four-five films one likes to broaden the horizons.

Writers, most of them, don't have a lot of resources.

I think a lot of big musicals close because of the rules they're bound by that make it impossible for them to be efficient.

The business part of the game is ugly.

You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.

Anybody who wants to make television has a tremendous problem because it's a financially restrictive media in this day and age.

The reason why Absurdist plays take place in No Man's Land with only two characters is primarily financial.