Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" It's expensive to produce musicals on television. "
Craig Zadan
Musicals
Expensive
Television
Related Quotes:
" We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience. "
Craig Zadan
Audience
Doing
Even
" We'd go to studios with ideas to do movie musicals and they'd literally kick us out. They said, 'Audiences aren't interested in movie musicals. You're wasting our time.' "
Craig Zadan
Time
Said
Ideas
" 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
" Neil and I share a desire for great quality in our work. If we are offered projects, look at projects, or consider projects that don't have that quality, then we don't do them. "
Craig Zadan
Look
Great
Desire
" 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
" 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 was captivated by Stephanie Mills. "
Craig Zadan
Mills
Captivated
" To battle the odds - loss of interest, no funding, discouragement - requires someone who doesn't give up. "
Craig Zadan
Battle
Loss
Odds
" The future for us is not to go bigger but to go different. "
Craig Zadan
Go
Different
Bigger
" 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 is very, very important that people understand that you can tell different kinds of stories, and they do, related to gay and lesbian issues - especially when you know the people behind them. "
Craig Zadan
Tell
You
Gay
" What usually happens on the Oscar telecast is that as soon as best picture is announced, everyone is up out of their seats and running off to their parties. "
Craig Zadan
Best
Everyone
Off
" 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
" '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
" 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
" 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 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
" It rests in the hands of 'Dreamgirls' and 'Hairspray.' If they're successful, we'll be back on track - people will continue to greenlight musicals. If they don't work, then you're going to see everyone go back to the way it was before 'Chicago.' "
Craig Zadan
Successful
You
Hands
" When we did 'Chicago' and we announced Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, and Queen Latifah, everybody went crazy and said, 'What are they doing? What are they thinking?' And, now, you look at the movie, and you see that we chose the people that we wanted for that movie, and we were so proud of all of them. "
Craig Zadan
People
Queen
Proud
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" We zero in on family as a theme because it makes the movies emotionally available to a universal audience. "
Craig Zadan
Audience
Family
Movies
" 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
" If anything's going to go wrong, it'd go wrong during 'Peter Pan,' not 'The Sound of Music.' "
Craig Zadan
Go
Wrong
Sound
" 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
" Neil and I are most thrilled that we were able to bring musical theatre to the enormous audience that 'The Sound of Music' reached. "
Craig Zadan
Theatre
Audience
Bring