American - Producer | April 15, 1949 - August 20, 2018
I don't understand how other producers who have no experience making a musical jump in and produce one.
Craig Zadan
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People think, 'Oh, you're doing 'The Wiz' because 'Empire' is such a big hit.' The truth is, staging this musical has been a dream of ours since the '90s, but the rights were tied up. It's just coincidental that, this year, when we were choosing a new musical, the rights were cleared.
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Carrie Underwood clearly drove 'The Sound of Music.' For 'Peter Pan,' we had terrific actors but not stars, and we did not do nearly as well.
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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.
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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.
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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.'
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We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience.
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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.
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The reality of producing the Oscars is that it's a blood sport. With social media, everyone has a chance to voice their opinions. You have to know that entering into this special world requires a very thick skin.
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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.
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I think we sublimated our Broadway desires by doing theater in Hollywood - not on stage but by doing the movies of 'Chicago' and 'Hairspray' and also musicals on TV. We did Rodgers and Hammerstein's 'Cinderella' and 'Gypsy' and 'Annie.' Even 'Smash' was like doing theater.
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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.
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