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" 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.' "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Neil and I are most thrilled that we were able to bring musical theatre to the enormous audience that 'The Sound of Music' reached. "

" 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. "

" The truth of the matter is - when we look at things - every movie we do - no matter what the subject matter is - we go to the universal theme of family. We always go to that because if the movie is about family, then any audience can relate to it. "

" 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. "

" We zero in on family as a theme because it makes the movies emotionally available to a universal audience. "

" A lot of people feel that 'Music Man' is a good movie musical. "

" To battle the odds - loss of interest, no funding, discouragement - requires someone who doesn't give up. "

" When you work on a passion project, there's always the chance that you'll get your heart broken. "

" He's perfect for anything. I would hire Hugh Jackman to come to my house and have dinner. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" If anything's going to go wrong, it'd go wrong during 'Peter Pan,' not 'The Sound of Music.' "

" It's expensive to produce musicals on television. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" I don't understand how other producers who have no experience making a musical jump in and produce one. "

" 'Chicago' kind of set the bar in terms of how we approach musicals, and tone is one of the key elements. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We'd never do 'The Sound of Music' because the movie was perfect. "

" In the past, once a movie musical was made, it was believed that you were left with that version, good or bad, for posterity. "

" 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.' "

" We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience. "

" The future for us is not to go bigger but to go different. "