Peter Bart Quotes

It's very difficult to raise money, especially in the United States, for independent movies.

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.

Like all independent movies, the first thing you're looking for is a name actor who will justify your financing.

Hollywood is running out of money and in order to keep geetting a third financed, you have to rely on overseas funding, and in order to do that, you have to get recognizable names.

It's so hard to raise money for independent films and the fact of the matter is that the bigger my star or whatever is, as a result of doing bigger pictures, the easier it is for me to get money for my own projects.

I think it's really odd, too, that the public is so privy to how much money the actors make and what movies cost. It seems to me to be beside the point. When I go to a movie I really don't want to think about the money. I want to see the story.

I've seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

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

You could go out with a camcorder tomorrow and make a movie with virtually no money, but promoting a tiny low-budget movie costs $20 million. And the money they spend on the big movies is astronomical.

The financing of my films has always been international.

Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film, so if it's hard for me then God help everyone else.

I never thought I'd make any money at all doing this business. Film was never even on the cards.

The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment.

Last year, when 'Black Swan,' 'True Grit' and 'King's Speech' all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies and not do the same old you-know-what.

The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'

All of my books have the potential to become movies, it's just a question of finding a studio who wants to get behind me and put up the money to make the movie.

I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.

With 'The Last Picture Show,' Peter Bogdanovich brought the script to the company that made it. They liked it, and they gave him the money he needed to make the film. He cast it with the actors that he thought were right for the parts. Now, it's the reverse.

I don't think 'Guts' could get financed as a movie.

It was a different time in the 1970s. Movies didn't have to make as much money.

It used to be the case that studio executives like Robert Evans, Darryl Zanuck, and David Selznick would put aside money for what they wanted to be great movies regardless of whether they would perform well with the box office.

I think I should have made 'Dead Silence' as an independent movie.

When I was pitching 'Hooligans,' with a budget of $15 million, most people said they don't want to see a picture about soccer thugs.