It’s always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.
BARRY LEVINSONI 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.
More Barry Levinson Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.
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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.
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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.
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I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.
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I thought a great line in the What Just Happened movie said, “We’re just the mayonnaise.”
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There’s no downside to having too much experience.
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I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.
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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.
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I think test screening works at its best when the audience knows what it’s getting.
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I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can’t truly define why something succeeds.
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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.
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