Producer

Basically, we had the idea of doing this production of 'Steel Magnolias,' and we spoke to Queen Latifah about it, and she got excited.

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.

To battle the odds - loss of interest, no funding, discouragement - requires someone who doesn't give up.

A lot of people feel that 'Music Man' is a good movie musical.

Neil and I are most thrilled that we were able to bring musical theatre to the enormous audience that 'The Sound of Music' reached.

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.'

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 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.

If anything's going to go wrong, it'd go wrong during 'Peter Pan,' not 'The Sound of Music.'

When you work on a passion project, there's always the chance that you'll get your heart broken.

It was very, very difficult to be a student in the drama department and also review my professors' school shows. I got a lot of pressure from them to quit the paper and concentrate on studying dramatic literature.

I would say that, first of all, if you have the honor of being chosen to produce the Oscars, you usually get only one crack at it. We were the first people in sixteen years to do it three times in a row, and it was one of the most profound experiences you could ever imagine.

We zero in on family as a theme because it makes the movies emotionally available to a universal 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.

Neil and I had the greatest experience of our lives doing 'Chicago' with Latifah. Then we had the second best experience of our lives doing 'Hairspray.'

When we went to Judy Davis and said, 'We want you to play Judy Garland in the mini-series 'Life With Judy Garland,' she was shocked, but we just had an instinct about her.

He's perfect for anything. I would hire Hugh Jackman to come to my house and have dinner.

Some filmmakers set out to re-create the theater experience they got on Broadway. They kept everything the same. They shot the original casts. We reinvent the whole thing, look at it solely as a movie. We pretend that nobody saw 'Chicago' or 'Hairspray.'

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.

We wanted to take on social and political and LGBTQ stories which no one at the upper level of the entertainment industry ever really wants to do. So you have to fight, and you have to persuade, and you have to manipulate the studios and the networks. And you have to go back - over and over again - until they say yes.