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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Do your homework and stand your ground.

I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.

Food was a constant topic of conversation in our household.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

I've been in a serious conversation with one of my children, and a fan has come up. I've been in a public bathroom and had the hand come under the stall with a paper and pen. That sort of thing anybody can live without.

Tonight was a great opportunity to take on the political status quo that has given us trillion dollar deficits and put millions out of work. Our objective was to inject some common sense into the conversation among Republicans at a time when business-as-usual simply won't work.

Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes.

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

A good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

I spend a good portion of my dinner-party conversation defending America because no matter what the political agenda, it's still a fantastic, amazing place.

Well, my closest friends are still the ones that I went to school with, but it's nice to go to work, at the studios, and have people there that you're willing to talk to and have a good conversation with.

There was a sense of all the things that go on on the street, particularly in New York, that you are just completely unaware of, that that conversation could be happening at any time. I loved the instability of the camera. It's just an unstable world.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating.

The dining room in my old house was truly magnificent, but by far the worst room for conversation. I'd get up from the table, a very long table, and somebody would always say, Paul, I never got to talk to you.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.

When I spoke, I was listened to; and I was at a loss to know how I had so easily acquired the art of commanding attention, and giving the tone to the conversation.

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!