Film Producers From The United States

"My dad turned 40 in October 1967 … in April '68 Martin Luther King was killed. In June '68 Robert Kennedy was killed. And in the fall of '68, my dad's mother died. He was left, on an existential level, saying, "This is what I am. I've got the love of my students and I've got nothing else. My country is going to hell." After 1968, he was never the same again. All the air went out of him."

"I was never really in love with acting. I always love movies and going to the theater. But did I love being in this business? Not for five minutes. I did it because I needed a job. For the first year or two, it's like a poison that enters your body. It's like a virus, and your body has to release antidotes. But it would be very unfair to say that it's that way all the time. It's just like anything this overwhelming that you enter suddenly. It's like being a contact at West Point. You're thrown into an intense environment. From the word go, you realize it's sink or swim."

"Every time we sit down to eat, we make a choice. Please choose vegetarianism. Do it for the animals. Do it for the environment, and do it for your health."

"I was in love when I was married to Kim Basinger, I’m not ashamed to say. I used to wake up in the morning and just look at her and say 'What do you want for breakfast, baby? Special K with blueberries? Let me go get some.'"

"“I broke my heart for every gain, to taste the sweet I faced the pain.”"

"You can fool people. You can fool anybody any time of the day, but you can't fool yourself. At night, when you go home, you've got to be straight up with you."

""I finally faced the fact that it isn’t a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems.”"

"You've got to know who you are before you step into this business, because if you're trying to find it, you'll probably wind up being somebody else, that you probably don't even like."

"I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow; if I fail, or if I succeed at least I did as I believe."

"Success doesn't change you; fame does."

"Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. And that's how I have to deal with it."

"I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside."

"It’s an increasingly rare case for a solo artist to see exponential success from back to back decades, and Whitney Houston was certainly that exception."

"I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians. I responded to that in making the picture. I put a lot of warmth into that character. Those immigrants were tough, more intensive than people are these days."

"Too often, I have not been what I wanted to be I've succumbed to pressures. Yes, I have. The things I've done that I liked, I've always done against advice. The bad films everybody was high on. The good films, they advised me against."

"Jo wanted to be pumped up before she went on to do a scene, she asked me to slap her... They did the scene over and over, never quite right. Every time she came over to me and asked me to hit her, and hit her harder."

"As actors it is easy for us to play the hero. We get to fight the bad guys and stand up for justice. In real life, the choices are not always so clear. The Hollywood Blacklist, recreated powerfully on screen in Trumbo, was a time I remember well. The choices were hard. The consequences were painful and very real. During the blacklist, I had friends who went into exile when no one would hire them; actors who committed suicide in despair. My young co-star in Detective Story (1951), Lee Grant, was unable to work for twelve years after she refused to testify against her husband before the House Un-American Activities Committee. I was threatened that using a Blacklisted writer for Spartacus –– my friend Dalton Trumbo — would mark me as a “Commie-lover” and end my career. There are times when one has to stand up for principle. I am so proud of my fellow actors who use their public influence to speak out against injustice. At 98 years old, I have learned one lesson from history: It very often repeats itself. I hope that Trumbo, a fine film, will remind all of us that the Blacklist was a terrible time in our country, but that we must learn from it so that it will never happen again."

"On working with in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957); as quoted in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2003) by Leslie Halliwell (ed. John Walker), p. 468"

"Compared to Thoreau, Saint Francis of Assisi was peanuts."

"I love champions. A champion has something special about him."

"The foreign directors are always fumbling about in obscurity, and the critics are always writing about the juxtaposition of black and white and the existential dilemma and all that shit, to disguise the fact that they don't understand the first damn thing about it either."

"I told him, "Michael, you're the kind of producer I'd like to work with because you give everything to the other person even when you're in the movie." He did that in Romancing the Stone (1984). He focused all the attention on the girl Kathleen Turner. I haven't been that generous. I've been a producer, but I find a product like Spartacus or The Vikings or Seven Days in May or Paths of Glory and somehow there always seems to be a good part for me."

"I renet it when I hear some of these young actors say they won't sell a picture. I've always felt that's part of my responsibility—to help getting people to see a movie. Funny thing is I don't even remember any of these young guy's names. I want to spank them."

"I've worked with Mankiewicz, Hawks, Kazan, Wyler, Wilder. I've been very fortunate. All of them work differently. I've even directed a couple of pictures, so I have respect for the work. But no matter what anyone says, it's a collaborative art form. I think the problem is that we've been contaminated by the European concept of the Auteur System. I've had movies where I bought the book, developed the script and cast the whole picture, but then the director walks in and says, "It must be a John Smith film." I think sometimes we emphasize that too much."

"I don't know if they have to care. I'm only concerned if they're interested in me. I don't care if you love me or hate me, but don't be indifferent to me. That to me is the worst thing."

"Don't crucify me because of what your idea of a movie star is. I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor. You people out in the East have no idea what goes on out here. No awareness or knowledge whatsoever. You lose track of the human being behind the image of the movie star."

"I find characters with a little evil in them much more interesting to play than the good guy. I'd rather play than ."

"This is the Alex Jones problem, Alex Jones is a very smart man with a lot of information at his disposal, however, sometimes he doesn't have the answer so he makes some shit up."

"Trump has got great genetics. He's tough and if he takes care of himself, he can make it through these years and then after. But, if he doesn't, he's gonna have. I predict Trump is going to have some type of collapse within the next 12 months of current trajectory. I'm not saying he's gonna collapse. I'm saying if he doesn't take his foot off the gas pedal ... if I had Trump's job at 51 for a month, I would have a nervous breakup."

"We gotta start building communities during the collapse and just say no satan worshipers allowed. Under the first amendment we can form churches that allow us to be only be amongst our own people of any race and creed but only Christians. We're going to have to declare it folks, and 100% just get with Christians. You're either going to be a Christian or you're going to be with the devil, that is the way it will be soon."

"I'll show you Muslims mass murdering black people and I'm not trying to attack the Muslims here, I'm just gonna show you what everybody is doing. Israel is doing a lot of bad stuff too, but just understand bringing in the Muslims, infact that is something I didn't get to, Israel wants to bring them here, I don't hate Israel, but you just take that rattlesnake, okay. I'm really mad about this, okay, this is a line in the sand, okay. You keep your little precious Muslims, alright."

"India was once twice the size it is today. Islamic forces have come very close to taking over whats left. Finally, under Modi India has woken up and is fighting for its very survival."

"At least you're going to get some good Republicans elected, and we like you. But, my God, maybe you're not that bright. Maybe Trump's actually a dumbass."

"Authoritarians always blame whole groups. That's what the Left does, they're sick and they're evil."

"And you've got a lot of people saying let's not topple the dictatorship in Venezuela even though it threatened the US and other countries and is collapsing and the people are begging don't do it and I tend not to want regime change where we overthrow some ally like Egypt and put someone like ISIS or Al Qaeda in, or do we stand by and let an thousand plus people starve and cause a collapse into the US border which the UN is helping to foment? That's a real territorial threat. That's a real national emergency. That's first year geopolitics for you here is where I may be right. I may not want intervention in Venezuela."

"The lights are home but nobody’s home."

"They're attempting to stop us here before this very important mission is launched. And that mission is taking place in the third heaven."

"(in Bernie Sanders's voice) I bankrupt stuff, I live in three millon dollar houses drive hundred thousand dollar cars And www-white people ddon't know what is like to be poor! Look at me, I have Einstein looking hair! Its called a gimmick!"

"When I say the Chinese are a inbred super mutant class that's in the genetics, and again remember, calling someone a mutant is not a bad thing, the X-Men and all that, which are fictional, but you know like it's good to be a mutant you understand, and the point is the Chinese do have some super geniuses of people. The point is you go to China and your like, 'well damn all these people look exactly the same like clones or something' kay, so the issue is there isn't a lot of genetic diversity."

"Yes, our kids belong to you, boys are out of Boy Scouts, no more father and mother, yes, yes, yes. Whatever you say, Hillary. Whatever you say Pelosi. Whatever you say Shapiro. Yes, Mr. Shapiro. Oh god you're so manly! That face you make, you scare me! God Almighty, you might tear my arm out of my socket! You might skull annihilate me, you're powerful! You've got the manhood I want, Shapiro! Sorry, go ahead, Rodger. Roger! Shapiro's too powerful!"

"Donald Trump shit his fucking pants at the fucking moment of truth and shit all over everybody. That’s my first approximation. I’m not in a fucking cult for Donald Trump. Fuck him. Fuck his family. Fuck all these people."

"God fucking damn it, man. What the fuck? Is there nobody fucking pure in this goddamn fucking world? See, I’m fucking pissed right now. Syria fought Al Qaeda, they fought ISIS, they fought it all, and now you’ve got [James] Mattis and fucking all these people shitting all over us."

"They said if you just turn against Trump it would be better, but he was doing good, and that's what makes it so bad... If he had been a piece a crap from the beginning, it wouldn't be so bad. But we made so many sacrifices. And now he's crapping all over us."

"I will not be stopped. Because I get on my knees and beg for something particularly, I don’t get it. But I’m not in a coma, got that? I’m not in one. I’m going to stop that Nazi piece of crap, and you’re going to stop him, and he hates our guts. Well, we’re coming for you—you got it?"

"Look, here's the thing, I'm gonna be honest with you: I- I'm kinda retarded."

""There's no video of president Trump sucking a ding dong. And so what if there was, that's a lot better than World War III Owen. I never sucked any ding dongs, but I'll tell ya if they were going to black mail me to start World War III about one, I'd say hey, I sucked a ball golf ball through a frickin garden hose!"

"Hitler took the guns. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. You know, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' And then if another crazy person everybody knew was going to attack goes and kills some people and then I'm to blame and all gun owners are to blame? Well, if somebody runs somebody with a car are they all to blame? Or somebody with a baseball bat? This is common sense and you've got a young high school senior teenager cussing to get attention to pull a stunt but none of use are supposed to talk about it because if you respond to him calling you a piece of this or a piece of that or his cohorts calling Dana Loesch a murderer and people are chanting 'burn her', well then you're a bully. That's why CNN wants to use this to kill the First Amendment, not just the Second Amendment! You have YouTube banning videos with guns, with citizens having guns or showing guns, but Hollywood and the video game makers can show all the guns they want. This is an incredibly discriminatory system!"

"Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down."

"He says, 'Alex Jones and the white supremests are saying go to the people's houses and kill the parents, and we have to take him off the air because he says kill the parents, there's no free speech for killing parents' and I'm like 'dude, do not say that, I'm gonna get killed.' I mean, I've never said nobody died at Parkland, and I sure as hell didn't say, 'Kill their parents.'"

"I'm ready to kill people, I'm sick of this. Not literally. The point is I'm getting sick of this crap. Let's just give all our kids to the child molesters, goddammit! Excuse me. You know, I'm not saying Lord's name in vain, I want these people damned to hell! I'm literally praying, God, damn them to Hell! That's not the Lord's name in vain! I mean that! I don't take God in vain [sic] but we ought to have a prayer called the Goddamnit Prayer! God damn them to hell, please! You think Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes, when he realizes this is Earth and all his family died 10,000 years before and he's come back through a wormhole, and everybody he knows is dead and he's saying, God damn them to Hell! You bastards! You blew it all up! God damn you! He's not taking lords name in vein! He's saying God damn them! God damn them! God damn them! God fucking damn them to Hell!"