Jon Feltheimer Quotes

I don't make deals, I make pictures.

Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.

What's so great about DreamWorks is that it's run by filmmakers who believe that if it's not broke, don't fix it.

It is gorgeously shot, and Andrew believes that the old school way of making films in the best way. Meaning: you have a story, and you stick to the story. You don't change and alter the story because of people who've invested in it and what to put product in a shot.

I'd rather not make films than make bad ones.

Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.

I'm very serious about what I write and who I allow to produce the music, because I want to make sure it's a true album, and not just something pushed out there to create hype and more fame for myself.

I'm fed up with the idiots... the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies.

Now having said that, I realize that releasing a film in the real world is like trying to get General Motors to release a handmade car.

I am not going to do a film based on a bad scenario just to make a big Hollywood film or work with Hollywood stars.

The worst thing you can do after a test screening is slash it for the lowest common denominator.

I decided to do whatever I could to make sure the business side of music didn't intrude on the creative part.

I've always said that I would only ever release something that I would want to listen to as a fan.

Every song that I compose has to satisfy the music director in me.

I'm not a movie person. They're collaborations of the worst kind. You must compromise yourself to many interests that are venal and crass and do not have your best interests at heart.

Directors always used to be like the police to me - the enemy, the people to tell me what to do when I didn't want to do it. But I've lived with one for a while now and I guess I can put myself more in their position. You shouldn't be too sympathetic to them.

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

Harvey [Weinstein] didn't want to release [MY SON THE FANATIC]; he held it for two years because he wanted a happy ending, although I don't know what that means. Does that mean the taxi driver leaves his wife or doesn't leave his wife? I think it has a happy ending.

Of course, at their best, movies are anti-literature and, as a medium, belong not to writers, not to actors, but to directors.

If I have things my way, over the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more directing and a lot less acting. That will be fun for a while.

Whatever field you can do that, that's where you want to do it, and I think that's why people like David Fincher and Ridley Scott are interested in it, too, because when you sit down on a meeting in HBO and they're like, "More, more." You're just like, "Oh yeah, I love this." Sometimes it's a little harder in film. I think also it's a great audience, take advantage of it. It's a great audience.

When I write something, I want the best director to direct it. And that's not going to be me.

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

Directing a movie precludes me from being involved in any greater way. But, the job was never to do more, it was always to enable. Sometimes as a producer, you're creating and writing it, or sometimes you're writing and directing it, or other times you're there from the very beginning.

I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.