"The biggest danger of Hollywood becoming a purely corporate town resides in the creative process." -- Peter Bart
Peter Benton Bart (born July 24, 1932) is an American journalist and film producer. He perhaps best known for his lengthy tenure (from 1989—2009) as the editor of Variety, an entertainment-trade magazine.
Bart is also a co-host, with film producer Peter Guber, of the weekly television series, Shootout (formerly Sunday Morning Shootout) , which, since 2003, has been carried on the AMC television channel and is also seen in syndication and in 53 countries around the world.
"A green-light meeting is when the decision is made finally whether or not to make a given picture.""Analyses of the movie marketplace points to an interesting phenomenon: High-profile movies are continuing to do well year-to-year in the U.S. and overseas - this past summer, for example, the top 10 movies registered at the same level as in '04.""Historically, filmmakers always fall in love with every frame, but now that even neophytes are given final cut, this love affair carries with it serious economic implications.""Hollywood is going to have to find a way of meeting those profit goals.""I wasn't hanging around the movie theaters in New York where I grew up, a Manhattan brat.""It really hasn't been demonstrated at any level by any major corporation that it can nurture what is euphemistically called creativity.""It's only in relatively recent years that Hollywood became the playground of multinational corporations which regard movies and TV shows as a minor irritant to their overall activity.""Michael Eisner let it be known last week that he had no intention of leaving the entertainment business once he steps down as CEO of Disney in October.""Most movie-goers are overdosing on star coverage; it's the ultimate example of too much information.""One of Brando's problems is that he can't have a conversation with anyone.""Study the public behavior of top stars and you can detect a keen attentiveness to brand value.""Substantially fewer films will be produced over the next year or two. And a significant portion of the production costs of the reduced slate will be borne by hedge funds and other investment groups.""That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.""The green-light decision process today consists of maybe of 30 or 40 people.""The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.""The major media companies are significantly reducing their financial commitment to the motion picture sector.""The model today is that as much as 70 percent of the financing of the picture would come from overseas. Now we're beginning to run out of suckers, because there are not that many people overseas who are willing to put up more than half the money for a movie.""Though gay lifestyles have certainly moved into the open, there's little evidence that society has become more open in its basic attitudes or that entertainers should feel cozy in emerging from the velvet underground.""We're going to see a very, very commercial kind of picture-making."
Bart was born in New York City, New York, the son of Clara and M.S. Bart.
Bart was educated at Friends Seminary in New York City; Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and The London School of Economics and Political Science in London, United Kingdom.
He served as a reporter and columnist for The New York Times and as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Sun-Times prior to entering the film business.
Starting in 1967 Bart worked as an executive at Paramount Pictures, rising to vice president in charge of production. He played a key role in such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968), True Grit (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), The Godfather (1972) and Paper Moon (1973). After eight years at Paramount he become senior vice president for production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and president of Lorimar Productions, where he was involved in such films as Being There (1979) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). Bart also served as a co-producer on such films as Fun with Dick and Jane (1977) and Islands in the Stream (1977).
He joined Variety as editor-in-chief in 1989. In 2007 Bart appointed Tim Gray to become his successor as editor with the understanding that he would stay on as columnist, blogger and consultant. In April 2009 it was announced that Bart was moving to the position of "vice president and editorial director", characterized online as "Boffo No More: Bart Up and Out at Variety".
He served as executive producer and screenwriter of the documentary film, Boffo! Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters (2006) shown on the HBO television channel.
Through the years Bart has published eight books, including five non-fiction and three fiction.
Destinies, a novel co-written with Denne Bart Petitclerc (Simon & Schuster, 1979)
Thy Kingdom Come, a novel (Linden, 1981)
Fade Out: The Calamitous Final Days of MGM, nonfiction (Morrow, 1990). Refers to the final days of MGM as a historic film studio in Culver City, California. (MGM still exists as a company.)
The Gross: the Hits, the Flops ... the Summer that Ate Hollywood, nonfiction (St. Martin's Press, 1999) (paperback: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000 - ISBN 978-0312253912 )
Who Killed Hollywood? and Put the Tarnish on Tinseltown, nonfiction (Renaissance, 2000)
Shoot Out: Surviving the Fame and (Mis)fortune of Hollywood, nonfiction coauthored with Peter Guber (Putnam, 2002)
Dangerous Company: Dark Tales from Tinseltown, a collection of short stories (Miramax, 2003)
Boffo! Hollywood in the Trenches: How I Learned to Love the Blockbuster and Fear the Bomb, nonfiction (Miramax, 2006)
