I've had it happen to me before where it turns out that they never had the money and couldn't have made the movie in the first place. And these are the things you have to look for when trying to read the behavior of the people you sit down with.
The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know where we would have gotten the money.
It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower.
Several times we were stranded in strange places without any money and with our credit cards cancelled - trapped in a hotel that we couldn't check out of because we had no money to check out.
What's difficult with doing 'The Producers' is your appetite is enormous. You want money; you want boards; you have huge desires. You've got to want more than anything for two and a half hours. Everything is heightened.
Mafia guys are all just insecure people who want their money. They're like little seven-year old kids when they don't get their way. I knew guys like that growing up in New Jersey.
Many seniors understand that Social Security is social insurance as opposed to a program where we put money aside for our own retirement. But most elderly individuals think they're getting their money back. So it isn't selfishness as much as a misund...
It is day after day in this institution, borrow money, run up the debt, run up the deficits and then with a straight face say, we are going to repeal a tax that affects 1 percent of the American people, just 1 percent of the American people.
For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, 'Academy Award ...
I mean, Dodd-Frank is strangling small community banks. It doesn't make any difference what the interest rate is. They're not - they're not going to loan the money because they can't make any money for one thing plus the cost of compliance.
I grew up with no money. My kids will grow up with a lot of money and so it's really important to me, and it will always be a part of my parenting, to keep them conscientious and connected socially to other people.
I never cared about money because I never needed money, you know what I mean? When I was 12 to 17 I never saw any of the money, so the money never motivated me.
There's still a lot of investors wondering what to invest in. And, of course, I think entertainment looks attractive when you read the few films that make these insane amounts of money. What they don't know is they don't always do that.
Protect IP (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are a step towards a different kind of Internet. They are a step towards an Internet in which those with money and lawyers and access to power have a greater voice than those who don't.
I think that there was a lot of undisclosed money that came into South Dakota, driving a message to paint me as a Washington partisan, which I don't believe that I am, but it was a message that resonated, after pounding it away for a number of weeks.
I think Hollywood is so driven by money, the people who are making the decisions are not necessarily reflective of the melting pot, so what stories are you going to want to tell? You're going to want to tell stories about yourself.
Although it sounds cliche, the main thing I want to do is touch people with what I do. I want everything I do to be meaningful, and I want it to be about more than just myself, or the money.
I used the principles of Kickstarter to make 'She's Gotta Have It.' We filmed that in 1985 to 1986. The final cost was $175,000. I didn't have that money. It was friends, grants, donations. We saved our bottles for the nickel deposit.
My criteria for doing theater has always been slightly different than my criteria with movies, in that there are a lot of reasons to do films, having to do with location, money, and first and foremost having to do with script and role and director.
I'm a bit of a shopaholic. I've been working in the Bollywood film industry since I was 17, and I have always been financially independent, but I think I would be useless looking after my own money.
I worked for a charity for a while, but... well, I started acting while I was in high school. I kind of just got lucky enough to live at my parents' house until I was actually making enough money to be somebody's roommate.