I was working with another major label after Warner Bros, and they were telling me who to hire as musicians, what kind of music to play, what producer to use. I mean, what's the point of putting me on the record?
Think about trailers you see in theaters. If you're seeing a Warner Bros film, the studio might have three of the five trailers. So having a hit helps you create the next hit.
I was a Charles Schulz kind of guy. I didn't read comics books. The Warner Bros. guys were great - Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng.
The big one I missed out on was 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' MGM wanted me for it, and Warner Bros. wouldn't give me permission to do it.
The size difference on a Warner Bros. film versus the small productions I had been on in Europe was enormous. You go from 20 people on set to 150.
I'm a big kid, I'm a kid at heart, so I still love the classic family films, such as the great Warner Bros film 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' - not the remake, but the original. It's still one of the best movies, hands down, ever made, and of course that goes back to the ingenuity of the characters and the storyline.
Warner Bros. got into television very early, so I did a lot of television there. In the beginning, it was sort of okay to do television. But then it became this thing where movie actors didn't do television - they certainly didn't do commercials, because that just meant the end of your career.
We're going to help DC feel like more of an important priority in Warner Bros.
Our goals were and are to be sure that we set up DC Entertainment to be more integrated and more cooperative within DC as well as in Warner Bros.
I turned in a script that meant a lot to me and an executive at Warner Bros said he was disappointed in me. I took a hit of confidence and stepped away from film-making for some time.
