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"There's really no movie until you have the money to pay for it." -Patrick Goldstein

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"We had no idea what we were getting into." -Graham King

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'Midnight in Paris' almost didn't happen in Paris because the film was too expensive.

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'Midnight in Paris' Almost Didn't Happen in Paris

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The cost of production in France derailed the production for a few years, until a French tax credit changed the situation.

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"As far as financing goes, when you go into a movie that big and that ambitious, you're always gonna face hurdles, but regardless, when you come out the other end, to me and the investors, it's more than just the dollar." -Graham King

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"Take some antacid." -Mike de Luca

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"But at the same time, you as a producer are having to deal with the art of the possible. At some point, you want to move on." -Patrick Goldstein

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"Well, I don't know if this sounds narcissistic, but it's hard not to read your own life into material sometimes, because you find that what moves you is something that you relate to." -Mike de Luca

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"I mean you build a relationship, and it's about producer and director knowing each other's boundaries and having the chemistry. And some directors, there are producers, and they get involved in all aspects of the set." -Graham King

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"I have been in a position where the PGA took Brad Pitt and Brad Grey up for the The Departed, and I completely forget to thank him at the Oscars and it became a lot of problems. And these guys had a chance to win an Oscar and I think they should have." -Graham King

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The Departed Wins Best Picture: 79th Oscars (2007)

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Graham King recalls talking with Scorsese while shooting "The Aviator."

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Martin Scorsese Explored the Madness of Innovation with “The Aviator”

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Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. This month, we’re celebrating the release of The Irishman with a retrospective of the work of Martin Scorsese. Read the rest of our coverage here. The trials and tribulations of Martin Scorsese began during the production of Gangs of New York, a movie he had dreamt of making since his childhood. He read the book Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury in 1970 which reinvigorated his youthful interest in the pre-industrial New York, acquired the rites in 1979, and then twenty years later started filming the mega-production in Rome, where he recreated blocks and blocks of old New York. By that time the project had undergone dozens of rewrites, scholars had been kept on retainer to ensure historical accuracy, the cast had changed completely, and producer Harvey Weinstein terrorized Scorsese all throughout production, demanding he make cuts. After such an enormous undertaking, it was only natural that Scorsese, who had finally become a legend after decades as a fixture in American cinema, would feel something pretty profound after his dream project finally escaped into the world. So he decided to poke fun at himself by making what looked like an autobiographical projection: A biopic based on the life of hypochondriac shut-in producer wunderkind Howard Hughes. The Aviator was as much of an epic as anything else Scorsese had done. But it felt like a jazzy diversion, a weightless trifle in micro. The film builds a towering and tragic portrait of a man undone by what he can’t control about himself, even as Scorsese proved himself capable of building anything he wanted with his hands. Shot by Robert Richardson in his best approximation of two-strip Technicolor, the film is like a pre-code provocation, all flaunted mores, double entendres, snarling villains, gamine gals, and thrilling action sequences. Every few minutes a new movie seems to start in the story of Hughes’s quest for world domination. Scorsese begins his flirtation with the uncanny valley here with his stunt casting of celebrities as celebrities (Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow, Jude Law as Errol Flynn, Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner) as a way of bringing us in contact with history through the untouchable luster of fame. The film becomes enormous in depicting Hughes’ own runaway productions and the mountains of production and personal troubles that kept him from ever approaching ordinary. A scene of him flying a plane with Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, doing Bugs Bunny) and landing it on a golf course shows off the allure of being a rich maniac as good as anything. His life was a thousand feet above the ground, so naturally, everything (his affairs, his hobbies, his social awkwardness, his Napoleon complex) else in his life soared above the heads of everyone who needed or wanted to be close to him. Living and working in the shadow of a petulant colossus became too much for most of America, including Hughes himself, who increasingly shut himself off from the world. He could have had anything but his complexes and instability made him want increasingly little. After all, he belonged in the air, and no one could give him that. Not forever. Leonardo DiCaprio is terrific as Hughes, all taut boyish arrogance. This was the first clue he was going to become who he is now (bizarre persona and all). The way he handles himself in the film’s many flight scenes finds him at his most vulnerable, swearing aloud though he knows no one can hear him. He thrives on speed and knows as he’s going down that he’s got no one to blame but himself. It’s the closest he comes to self-awareness. In board rooms and screening rooms, he’s just another millionaire. The Aviator was as much of an epic as anything else Scorsese had done. But it felt like a jazzy diversion, a weightless trifle in micro. The scenes of flight still dazzle, Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing erasing the seams and making Hughes look like a lost god. Young Hughes filming the dogfights that make up the spine of his movie Hell’s Angels set to Bach is even more breath-taking today than it was in 2004. It’s also the register most of the movie is in, whether Hughes is discussing his emotions intimacy with Hepburn or losing his cool on red carpets or bickering with other executives. Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda are both great value as Hughes’s nemeses; ditto Edward Herrmann, who shows up for one scene as Edward Breen, the father of the production code. But for all their menacing power, the most shocking and awful moments are when Hughes enters public bathrooms. Suddenly years of mania spill out, and each scene with him and his bar of mother’s soap (the film’s version of Chekhov’s gun) is worse and more grippingly intense than the last. Suddenly the giant is a little boy. Scorsese, who’d had his share of crippling blows dealt by grotesque producers, who still after making the world sing whatever tune he calls in his movies, to this day has to defend what he does to the public, must surely know the feeling. The Aviator Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FebPJlmgldE

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"The pitch that you're talking about is Ben Mezrich wrote, a 14-paged book proposal for his publisher Random House about the origins of Facebook and the friction that took place at the beginning." -Aaron Sorkin

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10 Years Later, Author Ben Mezrich On The Book Behind ‘The Social Network’

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Author Ben Mezrich was the first to see the dramatic potential in the story behind Facebook

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"And when I wrote that script I was naive enough to think that it would be made instantly, changed my life forever, and I could write anything I wanted to in Hollywood. I certainly learned better than that." -David Seidler

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Lisa Cholodenko discusses how a simple conversation created a film cornerstone.

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‘The Kids Are All Right’ Turns 10: The Untold History of the Queer Family Classic

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The filmmakers and stars of “The Kids Are All Right” reflect on the trailblazing queer film’s 10-year anniversary.

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"So you go on and on and you keep writing drafts and you keep trying to make them tight, and meanwhile, you're waiting for your partner to come to the next coast, or be able to travel, and things marinate and start the truth and the falsity of what you've written, the authenticity, the level of understanding of your characters, and of your plot, I think that's something that really time is the thing that brings that in to focus." -Lisa Cholodenko

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"I mean I sort of spent ten years sitting alone in my apartment in Brooklyn writing, and so to be invited to come up aboard this incredible company and just work collaboratively with other writers, I just thought, "I have to do this.'" -Michael Arndt

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"And it's a great, great thing, because I think as a storyteller, you're always looking for a problem to give to your character that the audience doesn't see a clear, easy solution to." -Mihael Arndt

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"When you're writing nonfiction, particularly nonfiction about people who are still alive, and in this case they are young people, you have your own moral compass that says, "First, do no harm." You're not going to play it fast and loose with the lives of real people." -Aaron Sorkin

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"Charlie Mitchell: Well, it's sort of the basic writer's tenant, right? You're coming from mystery, complete mystery in this case of what actually happened. But something happened. Something made this man of promise, everybody said that he was very bright, had a brilliant future ahead of him, and he withdrew completely from the world."

-Charlie Mitchell

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Anne Thompson: "I love to know how you write, literally, physically."

Aaron Sorkin: "The most important thing for me is getting started. The difference between being on page two and page nothing is life and death."

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Jaine Dyer did a good job of making a clear and concise Padlet. Very nice!