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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.

I suspect that a lot of studio executives still think of me as 'what's-his-name'.

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.

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.

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

A lot of directors in television have come up through the technical ranks. They have all the technical skills in the world. They're not all that familiar with actors.

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.

In another time, another world, each studio made 200 movies a year and had 20 executives. Today, a studio makes less than 20 movies a year and has 500 executives. They own too many parking decks and too many billboard companies. They're awash in overhead, and it's pinning them down, and they know it.

In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.