I don't understand how other producers who have no experience making a musical jump in and produce one.
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.
When you work on a passion project, there's always the chance that you'll get your heart broken.
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.
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.
We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience.
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.
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.
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.'
We have a particular philosophy in the casting room that we don't really tell the actors - the actors tell us.
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.
'Chicago' kind of set the bar in terms of how we approach musicals, and tone is one of the key elements.
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.
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.
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.
Basically, we had the idea of doing this production of 'Steel Magnolias,' and we spoke to Queen Latifah about it, and she got excited.
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.
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.
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.
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.
