Barry Levinson Quotes

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

When I was growing up in Baltimore, the Colts were not just a team that played in the city. It was part of the city. Football players didn't make close to the money they make today and most took jobs in the off-season. Some were mechanics, others worked at furniture stores, and you could find them drinking at a neighborhood watering hole.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

There's no downside to having too much experience.

You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation.

I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey.

There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.

Different reactions while film test screening doesn't mean even the audience thinks ambiguity is a bad thing. But if you're asking them right away to start checking things off, they don't know what to do. I think at their best, it applies to when the audience knows what it is. Then, when they say, "Oh, well, I thought it was too boring in blah-blah-blah part," then you better pay attention to it. It's like going for the hamburger. Better be the good hamburger I went for.

I don't know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don't think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

Studios just sometimes make decisions on their own that you're always flabbergasted by. It just happens that way for whatever reason - not even pointing fingers, it just is.

It's such a funny thing. Hollywood is terrible unless you happen to be a celebrity who's a Republican. So Ronald Reagan can be a Hollywood celebrity, and he's a Republican, and then he can become the president, and that's okay. Fred Thomson, well, that's okay. But the rest we need to demonize. There's no consistency.

A lot of people have done things over the years and made fun of people in one way or another. When I was a kid, Vaughn Meader used to do John F. Kennedy. I don't know if that makes John F. Kennedy less credible. He would do the voice, he'd have some silly situations or whatever. I don't know if it made him less presidential because of it.

I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.

Sarah Palin kept talking and talking, and the more she talks, the less compelling she can be. People say, "She's a very good politician, very deft at what she does," and whatever. And I hear that sometimes and go, "I don't know much about this stuff, but I would say no." Because the really good politician expands the audience, not contracts it. She may be getting a very vocal crowd, but it's a very specific group.

I don't see Sarah Palin suddenly spilling over to a wider group where suddenly they go, "Wait a minute, I've heard her message, and now I'm beginning..." It's not expanding it. A politician that doesn't expand from the base is not a good politician. So I disagree with all the talking heads that go "Well, she's a very good politician." She's not! Good politicians expand, and she doesn't.

Ronald Reagan was this actor who was going to be president, and he was very charming. What he had was, he talked about America in ways that got people all caught up in it. He was creating this America - it could even be the mythical "America" - that we subscribe to.

If you test Iron Man and that audience doesn't respond well, you can be damn sure that there is something wrong with the movie that you have to address. Because they're expecting a certain amount of action, right? They want a hero. There are certain things that have to be compatible with the way the audience is thinking about it. If you take some other film, like No Country for Old Men, you can end up with all kinds of crazy reactions.

I don't know what Bruce Willis has done in real life. We know actors have certainly had tirades - that's for sure. I never had troubles with him, but the big issue is really less about what Bruce is, as opposed to - this behavior has taken place, and sometimes it came out at something that had credibility, as opposed to, "No, I want to be fat and have a beard." Other people say, "I don't give a damn about the credibility. I paid $20 million. I want to see a movie star."

I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.

I think we are seeing a radical shift in the business in general. The studios are making much more of the real big extravaganzas and there are other kinds of films that are coming out. I think you are going to begin to see more diversification that we've seen in the past.

I think it's a promising time which will show a lot of diversification that we've seen in the past.

It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

Everybody's trying to hold onto some shred of dignity in the process of it all, and, at the same time, never talking about how they don't have the power. No one has the power. So, you know, producers - we always think, "Well, producers are very powerful," but producers don't really have the power.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

We're never going to be the ultimate-insider look. You can do 50 insider looks at this Hollywood business, and the satire didn't intrigue me. I think others can do that.

Creative differences are legendary in this movie business, so we're really not exploring the creative-difference aspect as opposed to the money aspect, or the fact that something can come up in a movie and literally put the whole movie on the line, and this is where producers have to earn their keep.

I thought a great line in the What Just Happened movie said, "We're just the mayonnaise."

Producers - we always think, "Well, producers are very powerful," but producers don't really have the power. It's the appearance they might, but they don't. Even the actors don't. Even the studio heads don't, because they're beholden to this corporation and what the corporation wants. So no one really has the power, and everybody's trying to get through the day, and everybody's nervous and desperate.

You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.

Rain Man certainly didn't test really well. If you look at it carefully, you have a disease autism they didn't understand back then, they didn't know in the test audience whether it's okay to laugh or not laugh, because it's a film that's done in a way where, "Well, maybe I'm not supposed to laugh." At the end of the film, Dustin Hoffman gets on the train and doesn't even acknowledge his brother. Not even a glance, nothing. That's why the studio said, "Can't you just have him look at Tom Cruise at the end of the film?"

No one really has the power, and everybody's trying to get through the day, and everybody's nervous and desperate.

I think test screening works at its best when the audience knows what it's getting.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

I don't know that you can do it as a satire. I mean, the business is crazy enough as it is. It's like doing Wag The Dog - we took a thing that was almost completely absurd on one level, and then ultimately those things came about.

I'm emotionally invested in every movie that I do, period, because you've got to make that commitment. You're spending a year, 18 months of your life doing it. I'm invested in all those kinds of pieces. Most of the films I've had in my career have never tested well. I got lucky that sometimes I got supported by studios - or, at least if not supported, tolerated.

As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.

I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.

You do understand that you can't force the situation, but in terms of how you edit, you can define that to take the audience along, whether it be a storyline or a character moment that we can play out. The more experience you've had, the more beneficial it is, period.

They're intimidating the networks and levying these fines, so the networks are not sure of what they can or can't do.