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" He's perfect for anything. I would hire Hugh Jackman to come to my house and have dinner. "
Craig Zadan
Dinner
Perfect
House
Related Quotes:
" There were no TV musicals until we did Bette Midler 'Gypsy,' and the success of that opened the door for us to do the rest. "
Craig Zadan
Door
Success
Musicals
" It was very, very difficult to be a student in the drama department and also review my professors' school shows. I got a lot of pressure from them to quit the paper and concentrate on studying dramatic literature. "
Craig Zadan
Studying
Quit
Pressure
" The people with mean things to say, say them. At the end of the day, the mean things and the good things only drive viewership. So what do you want? You want the ratings. "
Craig Zadan
Good Things
Drive
Good
" We've spoken to a lot of friends who are stars who could be great, and they say to us, 'Look, if you were doing a movie musical, and we could pre-record and lip-synch, sure. But live? So if we hit a bad note it's there for posterity? We're not going to go out there without a safety net.' People are scared to death of that. "
Craig Zadan
Death
Live
Look
" We'd never do 'The Sound of Music' because the movie was perfect. "
Craig Zadan
Music
Perfect
Never
" People think, 'Oh, you're doing 'The Wiz' because 'Empire' is such a big hit.' The truth is, staging this musical has been a dream of ours since the '90s, but the rights were tied up. It's just coincidental that, this year, when we were choosing a new musical, the rights were cleared. "
Craig Zadan
Think
Dream
People
" I think maybe the most important thing that we have to say is that people don't often talk about network executives being brave. You don't talk about them as having integrity and a higher purpose, because it's a job... except for Bob Greenblatt. He is a theatre person. He loves and understands it. "
Craig Zadan
Integrity
Purpose
People
" The reality of producing the Oscars is that it's a blood sport. With social media, everyone has a chance to voice their opinions. You have to know that entering into this special world requires a very thick skin. "
Craig Zadan
Voice
Media
Know
" Carrie Underwood clearly drove 'The Sound of Music.' For 'Peter Pan,' we had terrific actors but not stars, and we did not do nearly as well. "
Craig Zadan
Sound
Stars
Clearly
" We wanted to take on social and political and LGBTQ stories which no one at the upper level of the entertainment industry ever really wants to do. So you have to fight, and you have to persuade, and you have to manipulate the studios and the networks. And you have to go back - over and over again - until they say yes. "
Craig Zadan
You
Yes
Back
" We zero in on family as a theme because it makes the movies emotionally available to a universal audience. "
Craig Zadan
Audience
Family
Movies
" It's expensive to produce musicals on television. "
Craig Zadan
Musicals
Expensive
Television
" Neil and I had the greatest experience of our lives doing 'Chicago' with Latifah. Then we had the second best experience of our lives doing 'Hairspray.' "
Craig Zadan
Doing
Experience
Best
" Basically, we had the idea of doing this production of 'Steel Magnolias,' and we spoke to Queen Latifah about it, and she got excited. "
Craig Zadan
Steel
Excited
Got
" We called the head of CBS and said, 'We know how network television feels about musicals. Would you even consider doing 'Gypsy?'' He said, 'If I did say yes, you'd have to have a big movie star who does not do TV.' I told him that, in our fantasy world, we'd like Bette Midler. He said, 'Get Bette Midler, and you have an on-the-air commitment.' "
Craig Zadan
Say
Doing
Commitment
" We have a great musical sequence in episode five of 'Smash' called 'Let's Be Bad,' and it probably is the closest to 'Chicago' that I think any of us have ever experienced. "
Craig Zadan
Great
Chicago
Five
" We're finding that the casting of 'A Few Good Men' is different from the musicals because the kind of actors that you need to do it are movie actors, basically. "
Craig Zadan
Good
You
Need
" I don't think we're going to break the law in terms of what you can or can't do on TV. We're looking to do something edgy, different, and special. "
Craig Zadan
Looking
Law
Edgy
" The future for us is not to go bigger but to go different. "
Craig Zadan
Go
Different
Bigger
" I don't understand how other producers who have no experience making a musical jump in and produce one. "
Craig Zadan
Experience
Other
Understand
" 'Chicago' kind of set the bar in terms of how we approach musicals, and tone is one of the key elements. "
Craig Zadan
Bar
Chicago
Key
" If anything's going to go wrong, it'd go wrong during 'Peter Pan,' not 'The Sound of Music.' "
Craig Zadan
Go
Wrong
Sound
" Live TV is the future. It's the only way you can beat the DVRing of America. Everything is DVRed, and no one watches stuff when it's on. Awards shows and sports are watched when they're broadcast. "
Craig Zadan
Sports
America
Future
" Some filmmakers set out to re-create the theater experience they got on Broadway. They kept everything the same. They shot the original casts. We reinvent the whole thing, look at it solely as a movie. We pretend that nobody saw 'Chicago' or 'Hairspray.' "
Craig Zadan
Nobody
Chicago
Same
" I would say that, first of all, if you have the honor of being chosen to produce the Oscars, you usually get only one crack at it. We were the first people in sixteen years to do it three times in a row, and it was one of the most profound experiences you could ever imagine. "
Craig Zadan
People
Say
Three
" We have a particular philosophy in the casting room that we don't really tell the actors - the actors tell us. "
Craig Zadan
Philosophy
Casting
Us
" When we went to Judy Davis and said, 'We want you to play Judy Garland in the mini-series 'Life With Judy Garland,' she was shocked, but we just had an instinct about her. "
Craig Zadan
You
Life
Play
" I think we sublimated our Broadway desires by doing theater in Hollywood - not on stage but by doing the movies of 'Chicago' and 'Hairspray' and also musicals on TV. We did Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella' and 'Gypsy' and 'Annie.' Even 'Smash' was like doing theater. "
Craig Zadan
Movies
Chicago
Doing
" We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience. "
Craig Zadan
Audience
Doing
Even
" When you work on a passion project, there's always the chance that you'll get your heart broken. "
Craig Zadan
Passion
Chance
Broken