Craig Zadan Quotes

Craig Zadan

Profession : Producer

Birth : April 15, 1949

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

Craig Zadan

We have a particular philosophy in the casting room that we don't really tell the actors - the actors tell us.

Craig Zadan

In the past, once a movie musical was made, it was believed that you were left with that version, good or bad, for posterity.

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

The future for us is not to go bigger but to go different.

Craig Zadan

I was captivated by Stephanie Mills.

Craig Zadan

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.'

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.'

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

It rests in the hands of 'Dreamgirls' and 'Hairspray.' If they're successful, we'll be back on track - people will continue to greenlight musicals. If they don't work, then you're going to see everyone go back to the way it was before 'Chicago.'

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan

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.'

Craig Zadan

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.

Craig Zadan