1980s Hollywood Quotes

“David Kirkpatrick, a bald, former Jesuit student, whose smile never looked real, had the dubious distinction of being the executive with the longest run without a hit. We used to have a pool: When will Kirkpatrick get a hit? It didn't happen during my tenure. In fact, he became known as "The Teflon Executive, " because wherever he went, failure always followed. But for the longest time, it seemed that the bombs never stuck to him.”
― Dawn Steel, They Can Kill You..but They Can't Eat You

“Director of 48 Hrs. (1982), Walter Hill, says of the studio in the early-1980s, 'Paramount in those days was a very unpleasant place to work. That was their style.”
― Kim Masters, The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else

“The first time Polly Platt met Jim Brooks to discuss Terms of Endear­ment (1983), she was distinctly unimpressed. “I was infuriated that he was that late,” she recalls. “Fifteen minutes or half an hour, who cares, but to be a whole hour late.” She waited for him at Gladstone’s, a tacky tourist joint on the Pacific Coast Highway. “I just remember I didn’t like him ... I just didn’t like his turn of phrase ... I didn’t like the way he referred to the people. I didn’t like the people he was talk­ing about working with.”
― Rachel Abramowitz, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: The Truth About Female Power in Hollywood

“Robert Altman is an asshole.
That’s what producer Don Simpson, a friend of mine, thought:“We made Popeye (1980) and we hated Altman. He was a true fraud … he was full of gibberish and full of himself, a pompous, pretentious asshole.”
― Joe Eszterhas, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!

“United Artists had now begun a descent from the magical precedent-setting era of its rebirth in 1951 when Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin acquired the company from Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, to the sad-but-true cliché of a “Hollywood” operation typified by Mike Medavoy’s deceit.”
― David V. Picker, Musts, Maybes, and Nevers: A Book About The Movies

“My work in City Heat (1984) was still getting mentions in the trades, and I’d just wrapped Cobra (1986) – another project where I was principally responsible for the film’s moody and stylish palate, lots of shadows and contrast; So when I started Spaceballs (1987) Mel Brooks said to me, “Look, sonny, I don’t want any of this artistic bullshit, and I want none of that dark crap. I paid for those walls back there so I want to see those walls on the screen! Blast the light on ’em!” That’s why Spaceballs looks like a TV pilot, there’s a lot of light. In fact, I probably ­over-lit the film, but that’s the way the studios liked it at that time and it’s also the way Mel wanted it so that’s what I gave them. But if I was to do it again, I would push for something more nuanced and use some effects in there to give it a bit more character.”
― Nick McLean, Nick McLean Behind the Camera: The Life and Works of a Hollywood Cinematographer