Studio Politics Quotes

There was a saying around MGM: "Norma Shearer got the productions, Greta Garbo supplied the art, and Joan Crawford made the money to pay for both".

During my first few weeks in Hollywood, I was told that Jack Warner, the head of the studio, did not believe that a small-breasted woman could become a star.

M.G.M. never really gave me a break. They loaned me out for leading roles but cast me in programme pictures.

I don't think I'll ever be a producer who's into taking the meetings and fighting the big fights with studios. I really don't like that part. I'm much more interested in the material.

I was under contract to Paramount. They wanted to make me into somebody which I was not. So I got so scared and rebelled, so they threw me out of the studio.

I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.

I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.

I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with.

I used to have sort of mixed feelings about a producer whose only skills seemed to be going into the studio, schmoozing the artists and making them feel good. I can see now that in some cases, that's what you have to do because that's the only way you're going to get them to produce.

It's difficult working with very rich actors, because inevitably they become a little spoilt, and the managers and agents tend to control things more than is healthy.

Making films requires the creative skills you'd expect, but it also demands immense non-creative skills, like the ability to raise all that money and the savviness to work the studio's politics.

When you get to know an artist, you find out the things that have peeved them over the years, and it's generally the stuff that has to do with somebody not wanting to do things their way in the studio.

'Lolita' was a great wound in the side for me. I stuck my neck out maybe further than I should have and castigated the studio for not getting behind it.

After we finished 'Toy Story 2,' we talked about going right into making 'Toy Story 3,' because we had an idea that we thought had some promise. But there were a bunch of boring contractual problems going on between Disney and Pixar at the time that kept us from making the movie.

"I've always thought there was this underlying thing in Paul's "Get Back." When we were in the studio recording it, every time he sang the line "Get back to where you once belonged," he'd look at Yoko."

We're going to help DC feel like more of an important priority in Warner Bros.

I remember a meeting I had at MGM. It was at the end of their reign. They say we have you under contract, and because you’re under contract, we’d like to you to work. I said, well, that seems fair. But if it’s a really good movie, they were going to give it to a particular actor that was not under contract. The bottom line was they were going to pay you more if it was a bad one and pay you less if it was a good one.

[On her work in "Keep Your Powder Dry"] I didn't want to do it, but they said if I did it they would give me Undercurrent with Robert Taylor. Then they gave Undercurrent to Katharine Hepburn, so I left MGM.

The studio have always claimed that the ship is the star of the show, especially when they're renegotiating contracts.

I was very combative as a creative person at that time [while The Ben Stiller Show]. I didn't understand how to play politics with the studios. I didn't know how to creatively collaborate with the people who were paying the bills, and that came up all the time on every project I was doing, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to collaborate in a healthy way.

Don't forget, I've been fired by studios; I'm not the studio's guy. I'm a guy who can work with studios, but if you ask any studio, I stand up to these people.

It's interesting: John Calley at Warner Bros. helped me put 'Alice' together. It was very unusual back then for a studio to support an actress the way he backed and supported me. He even asked me if I wanted to direct the film, which I didn't feel prepared to at that point.

Dore Schary was then head of the studio and he wanted to change my name.

It's a debilitating process, working with the studios. With the length of time it takes for drafts and development deals, your enthusiasm is gone before you're ready to make the film.

I don't get along with many people, especially in studios. I'm quite blunt and I know what I want - and songwriters are very sensitive people.