Quotes

In this business you're either an artist or a salesman. When you fall in between it becomes problematic.

I saw a 60 Minutes (1968) piece on Dustin Hoffman the other day and he said something that echoes my own philosophy: "I like to make good movies regardless of finance". That's what I respect in other producers. David Geffen made a speech here in New York where he said: "Live action films are hardly worth making anymore because the costs are phenomenal".

When we made Jaws (1975) and the budget went from four-and-a-half million to nine million, it was considered absolutely outrageous by Hollywood standards of 1975. Today economics are such where there's very little incentive to make a daring movie...except a very daringly expensive movie!

Jaws (1975): We knew if the Studio took the film out of the cameras...it was never going to go back in.

Things had changed. Actors were telling the Studios how to make a movie, agents were just as powerful as producers. The Moguls didn't understand that world and couldn't tolerate it. It was a time when marketing people were becoming a large part of the process. They'd be the ones reading the scripts, going to dailies, they were even part of rough-cut showings. It was a Hollywood Darryl F. Zanuck wanted out of.

...Everyone was worried about the performance of Twentieth Century Fox. To make matters worse, Darryl F. Zanuck had a girl that he kept putting in pictures, and Dick didn't like it. He felt it diminished the process and at one point Darryl got it in his head that both Dick and I were trying to remove him from office ... a hostile takeover, if you will. But we weren't!

I think the independent world is the world of the future.

"Myra Breckenridge" was almost the undoing of my career.