Peter Bart Quotes (28 Quotes)

Study the public behavior of top stars and you can detect a keen attentiveness to brand value.

That's a little too much in the way of product opening on Christmas day, actually. They're going to bump each other off. That's a shame.

The temptation to do remakes is simply that, if the picture worked once in the past, why not try it again

Michael Eisner let it be known last week that he had no intention of leaving the entertainment business once he steps down as CEO of Disney in October.

There could be no replacement for Army, and no one will replace him, ... His niche and talents are very special.

Talent and role choice are most important. You can have tremendous publicity, but if you make one lousy movie after another, you're not going to get your price.

Most movie-goers are overdosing on star coverage; it's the ultimate example of too much information.

It's only in relatively recent years that Hollywood became the playground of multinational corporations which regard movies and TV shows as a minor irritant to their overall activity.

The major media companies are significantly reducing their financial commitment to the motion picture sector.

Though gay lifestyles have certainly moved into the open, there's little evidence that society has become more open in its basic attitudes or that entertainers should feel cozy in emerging from the velvet underground.

A lot of journalists who'd never dealt with Lucas, when they started competing ferociously for these stories, what they discovered is the land of Lucas is a very tightly controlled, rather rigorous domain.

The biggest danger of Hollywood becoming a purely corporate town resides in the creative process.

Analyses of the movie marketplace points to an interesting phenomenon: High-profile movies are continuing to do well year-to-year in the U.S. and overseas - this past summer, for example, the top 10 movies registered at the same level as in '04.

One of Brando's problems is that he can't have a conversation with anyone.

Substantially fewer films will be produced over the next year or two. And a significant portion of the production costs of the reduced slate will be borne by hedge funds and other investment groups.

Universal had hoped that 'Meet Joe Black' would be their big summer picture, and they just couldn't get it ready. So the only picture they had left for summer, basically, was 'Out Of Sight.' That was their big summer picture -- George Clooney picture. It didn't really work very well.

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.

We're going to see a very, very commercial kind of picture-making.

The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.

It really hasn't been demonstrated at any level by any major corporation that it can nurture what is euphemistically called creativity.

The model today is that as much as 70 percent of the financing of the picture would come from overseas. Now we're beginning to run out of suckers, because there are not that many people overseas who are willing to put up more than half the money for a movie.

I wasn't hanging around the movie theaters in New York where I grew up, a Manhattan brat.

When I was at MGM some years ago, I remember that there was a serious discussion of trying to remake some of the (Spencer) Tracy and (Katharine) Hepburn pictures. And that's a great idea except that they were successful because of Tracy and Hepburn.

It's tougher today because it's corporate Hollywood.

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

Historically, filmmakers always fall in love with every frame, but now that even neophytes are given final cut, this love affair carries with it serious economic implications.

A green-light meeting is when the decision is made finally whether or not to make a given picture.

The green-light decision process today consists of maybe of 30 or 40 people.