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It used to be the case that studio executives like Robert Evans, Darryl Zanuck, and David Selznick would put aside money for what they wanted to be great movies regardless of whether they would perform well with the box office.

Studios were just run differently. There really was a head of a studio. There were people who loved their studios. Who worked for their studios and were loaned out to other people and everybody sort of got a piece. Well now there's a handful now.

Well, Hollywood isn't made up of individual studio heads anymore. It's made of corporations. And corporations are looking for the bottom line. They don't want to take chances. They want the money back for stockholders.

The studio is meant to be always a place where, first of all, they can be out of spotlight, and second, where they could work with a peer group on parts that they might not have played otherwise.

Things have changed a great deal since the days of Mr. Mayer. The studios no longer control, as they did in those days, artists or directors or producers, as the case may be.

We were like a stock company at Warners. We didn't know any of the stars from the other studios.

Most of the contract people at MGM stayed and stayed and stayed. Why? Because the studio looked after them. Warner Brothers wouldn't - they were always spanking somebody or selling them down the river.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.

Don't forget, I've been fired by studios; I'm not the studio's guy. I'm a guy who can work with studios, but if you ask any studio, I stand up to these people.

I was under contract to Paramount. They wanted to make me into somebody which I was not. So I got so scared and rebelled, so they threw me out of the studio.