I vicariously lived the life of an independent producer from the time I was 4 years old.
I think of myself as a producer who tries to bring the best out of everyone, whether that be an artist, songwriter or a publicist.
While I used to make my living principally as a record producer, as time went on, I had to depend more and more on my live performances because of the evolution of the record industry, which has de-emphasized what made it possible to make a living.
My part as an actor ends on the last working day. I think the success or failure only really matters to the producer or whoever it matters to. For me, when I finish the film, I’m done, and if I’m happy, that’s that.
He makes me laugh, Mick! He tended to turn up when we were having lunch and entertain us all. He bought an Enigma machine! I’ve never worked with a producer who was more famous than everyone put together.
My college training was primarily in theatre, with an eye to becoming a director, actor, or producer.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don’t see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
Every creator has to follow what they believe. That’s the message I would love for every single executive to get, to clearly understand, and every single producer out there.
Ultimately, I am very filmmaker oriented, as a producer.
My dad is a successful television producer, director and writer and my mom’s a director and writer.
I thought I wanted to work in music production for a while. I worked for a film producer. Then I was given the opportunity to open a bar in New York. So, I was like, ‘You know what, I’m going to give it a shot.’
Got two kids; one’s a record producer who lives just up the road from me – great guitarist and piano player, too.
The sound of ‘Take Her Up to Monto’ and ‘Hairless Toys’ is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It’s too easy to be referential now; I’m trying to find something else.
The owner of a company with supertight margins – say, a restaurant, retailer, or producer of commodity goods – would be a fool not to keep a close eye on the numbers. But when I make big decisions, numbers are seldom, if ever, the tiebreaker.
Acting has been my first passion, and turning a producer was a natural progression.
For the movie ‘Bhaskar Oru Rascal’ I had to let go of a part of my agreed salary and in fact, had to lend money to the producer when he couldn’t meet his financial obligations at the time of the movie’s release.
It was a dream come true, as in my first film, I have Rajkumar Hirani as the producer and Madhavan as my co-star. Who can get a better role than this?
For me, every film is like the first picture. I am very choosy with the director and producer.
When I saw the rise of the anti-Christ Donald Trump, I was like, ‘Hell no.’ We can’t be in a country where we love celebrities so much that we let the executive producer of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ become the GOP nominee.
Honestly, I’m willing to experiment with far more variety in roles than I’m given. But ultimately, it’s the producer’s decision. But, I’ve done a variety of roles – the evil don, the evil husband… I’ve done villainous roles, supporting roles, etc.
If your knowledge is in your hands and in your mind, then nobody can take it away from you. Be kind and be on time! You never know who you’re talking to – the waitress today could be the producer tomorrow, so it pays to be kind to everyone.
I’ve never had to fight for a role. Call it my ego or my self-respect, but I won’t pick up the phone and call a producer and fight or ask for a role. That’s not me. I’ve always got the best, and my work speaks for itself.
As a producer, I try to bring as many nice people as I can to insure that there’s no screaming, there’s no shouting, there’s no bullying. The more of those kind of people that you can bring together, the better the experience everyone has on set.
Little Steven – the songwriter, producer, and arranger – stayed alive doing the ‘Lilyhammer’ score. That pretty much took up three or four years of my life, and all of my musical energy went into that.
Yes, I was invited to make the sound environment at a booth of a huge electronic company, during the Hanover Industrial Fair in 1973. It was a job. Slightly good paid. But not as much as my producer then told the press.
As an executive producer, I feel really lucky.
Usually in TV… A TV director could be anything from a main grip to just a glorified cameraman, and sometimes a director can be the person who is hired last. It’s very much a producer’s medium.
Some people work very closely with a director or a producer on something, and from the get go, they’re collaborating. But typically, it’s just go in for an audition, do the best you can, and if the phone rings a couple of days after the audition and you get the part, that’s great.
When I started writing the screenplay for ‘The Queen,’ about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
It costs a lot of money to make an album in a studio in New York with a producer and musicians. I have to pay a publicist every month. I have to pay for mastering, production, the manufacturing of the discs. Then, to promote an album properly, you have to spend a lot of money.
I think people really don’t understand what a producer does versus what a director does. I mean, the producer is often the person that is on the movie the longest – it’s their material that they are then bringing the director onto to bring it to the screen. Are we overlooked? Absolutely.
I’m worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer’s creation – not an artist’s creation.
The beauty about being a producer is you sit there, and you explore ideas which become a passion, which slowly becomes a reality.
As a producer, it’s your job to bang on the table and convince studio heads why great movies should be made.
I look at old interviews and things and they say, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ I say, ‘I want to be a producer.’ And I’m really fortunate that I was able to do it.
From the engineer to the producer, all of these roles are critical to creating a song.
On ‘Darjeeling,’ I was on set every day and I acted as the second unit director and a producer on that film. I was there throughout the whole process. On ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ I showed up for one day.
I would love to turn producer someday but the time has to be right.
I think that one of the greatest perspectives that I have, from being a buyer for my whole career until I became a producer, is that I have a pretty good understanding of the buyer’s mentality.
If no producer, no movie.
I won’t quit until I get run over by a truck, a producer or a critic.
I see myself maybe being, like, a movie producer or screenwriter or a novelist or a scientist or mathematician.
Puffy produced four of the tracks on the album. Those are the four songs that are collaborations between Puffy and me. And he gives me my space to work even when we work together, like with my producer and my vocal coach.
The question at the end of the day was, the courts having found there was no defense, a producer about to go to jail, should CBS in effect tell the producer go to jail even though there is no law at all that we can use to get you out of jail?
I love the producer, Joel Rice. We worked together years ago putting a project together.
Today I divide my day between being actor, producer and distributor, and the monotony is broken.
My producer, Michael Knox, he’s kind of my eyes and ears on Music Row. While I’m out on the road, he’s looking for songs, and then he and I will get together and go over songs.
I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer.
As I started to study old blues recordings and really pay attention to my favorites, it really started to come to me that all of my favorite pieces of music weren’t produced, they were performed. The producer is nearly invisible: no thumbprint other than the composition and the performers.
I’m a producer, I’m a mom, a friend.
The media love coarse debate because coarse debate drives ratings and ratings generate profits. Unless the TV producer happens to be William Shakespeare, an argument is more interesting than a soliloquy – and there will never be a shortage of people willing to argue on TV.
Wyoming, home to Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons, is also the country’s largest coal producer and one of its largest gas drillers. Two-thirds of the state’s gas-drilling rigs are on public lands in the increasingly industrialized Greater Green River Basin.
That’s Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental library of personnel who are great for this and great for that, and he brought this whole group of musicians to the project that I’d never worked with before.
It was a very difficult time, 1984. ‘Happy Days’ ended. I said, ‘There’s no way I can be a producer.’ My attorney said, ‘You’ll learn.’ The first thing we sold was the ‘MacGyver’ television series. We shot 139 episodes between 1985 and 1992.
