India needs better producers than screenwriters. No producer wants to invest in out-of-the way scripts.
I’ve worked with producers who have told me to lose weight, and I’m not overweight, but they want you to look strange, anorexic, horrible. It’s odd. It’s like they are exerting a power over women, that they want them to look really frail.
Casting me as King Arthur was quite bold of ‘Spamalot’s producers, although it has been historically proved Arthur was Asian, and that Sunday trading started with Asians in 11th-century Britain.
The producers, the creators, and the cast, we recognize that ‘Hamilton’ is an inherently American story told by the definition of an American community; we are men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.
Soaps are a double-edged sword. There can be prejudice from some writers and producers who feel you will lower the currency of their work if you’ve been in one. You have to rise above such ludicrous prejudice.
Sometimes you have producers tell you ‘I’m a huge fan, I’m a huge fan.’ But David Guggenheim, I have so much love for this dude.
The KXL pipeline would make it easy and cost effective for oil producers in Canada to transport oil to the Gulf of Mexico where it could be shipped to customers – not just in the United States – but around the world.
I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn’t until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain.
The beautiful thing about art is that there’s always somewhere to go. There’s always something new to explore and, as an artist, that’s just what I want to do. I wanna keep exploring new things with different directors with different producers and different styles and tones.
I’ve watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that I’ve written hits for come and go. But to the world, it looked like Justin Bieber was my first success.
You can take wonderfully talented actors, wonderfully talented writers and producers, and, uh, do a wonderful show!… but if it doesn’t hit with the public in two minutes, it’s bye-bye.
When producers and directors were courting Sivaji Ganesan, MGR directed and produced ‘Nadodi Mannan’ and showed that he can do it alone. He created history and stood his ground against one of the best actors in history, Sivaji Ganesan.
At a time when nobody thought we’d ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.
There’s so much control, so many executive producers, so many people looking over their shoulder, so many people trying to second-guess the boss. The space for writers and directors and actors to be creative is zilch.
What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.
Along the way, I’ve had different advice from different music producers. I’ve been told to tone it down, that the quiet parts of my voice are appealing and there’s harshness to the loud part of my voice.
I can honestly say that the fans inspire. There’s an unexplainable rush that comes when I’m in the middle of a set and the energy from the fans hit me. I also get really inspired through collaborations. I’ve learned so much from the emerging producers I’ve worked with just as they’ve learned from me.
I’ve been working with a lot of different producers.
Every single discussion I have with a first AD, or producers, is time of day. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve fought for early-morning calls. The light is 90 percent of our job; we as humans respond to light and where it is at different times of day and not only in positive ways.
Well, ‘Crunk Rock’ doesn’t mean rock. Initially when I started the album, I did collaborate with a bunch of rock musicians and producers. But as I started to have time to free my mind and catch different vibes, it started to mean something different.
The first thing is that we’re being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They’re trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.
‘Maaligai,’ where I play a dual role of a cop and a princess, initially was to be made as a Kannada movie. My producers from Mumbai and director Dil Sathya felt that it should be made as a bilingual in Tamil also, as I have a good market in K’town.
I played Big Brother in a Studio One presentation of ‘1984,’ and that should have marked me as a villain to American producers. But I went straight from that to placing a saint – St, Peter in ‘The Silver Chalice,’ which may have been one of the worst movies ever made.
Other writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would often put down the film they were making, saying it was just something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the assignment, I’d give it my best shot.
Most producers who want you to dance are not looking at the long term. They see their evenings, the box office, whom they have to repay, whatever.
There are certain things producers ask you to do, and when I was starting out, I said yes to everything. I was asked, for ‘Quo Vadis,’ to drive a chariot. I said, ‘Oh yes. I’m licenced for all vehicles.’ Two days later, I was sitting in this dustbin with two very aggressive horses. I didn’t stay in it for long.
For ‘Filth,’ we had about 12 producers on the thing. The opening credits go on for months. Most of them are actually financers rather than producers. And the only way that we could raise the budget without interference from a studio was to have a lot of different financers on board.
Jokes apart, people are constantly asking me, ‘What are you doing for the industry?’ When one makes a blockbuster, you plough back money into the industry. If my film makes 100 crore, I’m not taking the entire sum home! It gets distributed between the exhibitors, distributors, producers and actors.
Tariffs have almost never saved a domestic industry from decline and, often times, by sheltering domestic producers from competition, only reward and prolong bad business practices.
‘The Alesha Show’ was done with production crew Xenomania, and this time, I’ve worked with a lot of upcoming new producers.
When I broke up with Eric B., I went on a little hiatus. Then all I was trying do is find producers. It’s real hard, man.
I am thankful to my fans and producers that I am on my toes all the time to do better. The day you feel you have achieved it all or you are something, then you are gone, and that thought never came to me.
Let me tell you about being executive producer. It is not a job, it’s a title. Don’t go around asking executive producers what they do because they don’t do anything, alright?
There are two types of films – one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.
When you do a movie in the studio system, there’s a committee. A committee of six or seven people you answer to. There’s two or three producers, a studio executive and one or two people above that studio executive.
I went from basically filming in my bedroom by myself, filming some funny videos, and then overnight, I switched into filming in some studios and some warehouses and family homes. I started filming with directors and producers and editors, and there were so many people in the room, so it was definitely weird.
I think producers are more interested in backing concepts than directors and writers. I don’t think that’s the right way of making a decision about whether you’re going to back a film or not.
There are so many directors who don’t like any kind of interaction on set except for producers. I am the opposite.
I’m interested in colour-blind hiring of directors, producers, and writers. Go to the source. Then we won’t need to have conversations about colour-blind casting.
With my classical training and coming from a metal band, producers didn’t know what to expect. I like to shock people, though.
That’s one of my pet peeves, that big guys apparently don’t have an I.Q. above 50 in the eyes of audiences and producers.
I can’t change what casting directors do or what producers do. I can only change what I do.
You had to knock the doors of the great directors and producers; of course I needed the work and was desperate for work. I remember one of the producers saying, we have R.D. Burman, we have Laxmikant-Pyarelal, we’ve got Kalyanji-Anandji with us, why should we take you?’
I am lucky, that is all. Lucky because there are a lot of people – producers, directors, people who buy tickets – who put confidence in me.
For ‘Hey Monday,’ there were songs that I co-wrote with songwriters or producers, but our last EP, the whole band did everything together. I’ve had a lot of experience with co-writes, which is basically what I’m doing now. I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.
The levels of poverty in 1933’s rural America were unimaginable to us now. The 1933 Farm Bill, which introduced unprecedented government control over agriculture, was a reaction to the specific problems facing producers at that time.
