Douglas Wood Quotes

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

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

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.

There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

In big movies, interests are not aligned between those above the line and the financier, because above the line gets paid whether the movie works or not. The financier only makes money if the movie works, and that fundamentally sets up a contentious relationship.

'The Book of Love' is the kind of James L. Brooks mainstream movie that the majors are ignoring.

Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.

People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies.

We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.

Hollywood is a world where the only thing that gets green-lit is something that made money the last year.

I would never make a film because I think it's going to be a box-office success.

Filmmaking involves a lot of money and hard work, which should not be wasted, though nobody knows which film will be a hit.

I became a producer because nobody was ready to finance my films.

When I first started out and would go on pitch meetings, there was always this kind of eye-roll that would come with pitching a horror movie when you were dealing with the studios. Unless it was viewed as a cheap product that could turn a lot of profit, there wasn't a lot of interest in making it good.

The film industry is run by multinational media conglomerates and they have their perspective on what they need from their product. That's why we live in an era where you see reboots and sequels and remakes and prequels, all these old presents are re-wrapped and offered up as new gifts.

At Pixar, we believe strongly that filmmakers should develop ideas they are passionate about. This may sound like a no-brainer, but in fact in Hollywood, the big movie studios have whole departments devoted to acquiring and developing projects that will only later be paired with a director-for-hire.

Stars are always bigger. They bring the audience to the theatres. More than that, they do a lot of work in a film, and they are always on top. I am in no way competing with them.

I wanted to be a part of commercial cinema.

Our film society back home is so different from here. Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language. It's just figuring things out and understanding the codes and how the system of Hollywood compares to that of Norway. We don't even have agents. There's no studio system, no managers.

In America, I don't think you have the creative freedom that I'm used to. Traditionally, it's a producer's cinema here.

I was fortunate to write pretty much a year out of film school and start making movies in the Hollywood studio system. But with each progressive film it became more frustrating not being able to speak and say things I wanted to say.

I was on Warner Bros. for a minute.

The film business seems to attract rules more than any other business. I don't know why it does. I think it's because there's so much money at stake.