Clout Quotes

Persuaded Universal Pictures to turn the February 1994 Los Angeles premiere of Reality Bites (1994) into a benefit for the Polly Klaas Foundation. She also had enough clout to see that Louisa May Alcott`s "Little Women" - Polly`s favorite book - was made into Little Women (1994), with Winona in the title role and the film dedicated to Polly Hannah Klaas.

I didn`t do it because of the underlying greed that`s prevailing, but it is about greed, doing the right thing at the right time using your clout when you have it and what for and what reason.

Working for the studios is no piece of cake. But it`s a trade-off situation, whomever you work for. You have much less creative freedom working for big studios, but they really release your film. By comparison, you have enormous creative freedom working for independent companies like New World. But when it comes time to sell your film and show it to the public, they don`t have the same clout as big studios. The independents have to fight to get your film in theaters in which to show your film and they have to fight to keep your film in those theaters. Everybody in the business faces one truth all the time -- if your movie doesn`t perform immediately, the exhibitors want to get rid of it. The exhibitors only want product in their theaters which makes money. Quality has nothing to do with it.

Already this war on gangs in California is taking money from universities to build prisons, and the universities have some clout.

We had a sort of five-year plan. Neil wanted to go off and do Hollywood, while I wanted to make little films in my barn, on my own, and not show them to anybody, and see how it went. And the idea was, I`d get a point of view, and he`d get some clout, and then we`d meet up in a few years and make a feature film. Which is pretty much how it worked.

The 9/11 Commission strongly recommends that the National Intelligence Director be fully in control of the budget, from developing it to implementing it, to ensuring that the National Intelligence Director has the clout to make decisions.

I don`t think either the Offspring or Green Day started their bands with the intention of becoming so enormously popular; that sort of fell in their laps-especially the Offspring. My attitude is if somebody blunders into the level of popularity, at least remember the human factor. These guys are still human beings and hopefully still have hearts and if you keep in touch with them rather than vilify them you may be able to encourage them to go in the right direction. What I`m hoping will eventually happen is that they will grasp the amount of power and financial clout that is now at their fingertips and use those as tools to help real people with real things the way punk politics was always designed to do before, but nobody had any money.