MARC PLATT

Adaptations, especially movie musicals, are really hard to do.

I always appreciate hard work, and every actor has a different process. I appreciate focus.

I'm a very hands-on producer.

I have creative ADD.

When a writer gets a second chance to look back on something, it's a great opportunity to say, 'Hey, this is really good, but we can do it even better.'

I think too many people in Hollywood perhaps fail to make a distinction between the political side of Israel and the notion of the country. And they can be separate things.

It's hard to get an inner dialogue in a film. It's not cinematic. But in a musical, the character can just turn to the audience and sing.

Hollywood is what I do. It's not who I am.

The film world is always looking for great source material, and Broadway has traditionally and historically been a place to go.

'A Christmas Carol' and 'It's a Wonderful Life,' are movies we love with magic in them.

What makes 'A Christmas Story' universal, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, is that you recognize that family... It's ultimately about a family being glued together for the holiday season.

'Wicked' has been one of the biggest hits in Los Angeles theatre history, and we are thrilled that theatergoers here have embraced the musical and welcomed us so heartily.

The themes and ideas embedded in 'Into the Woods' always spoke to me.

I was always interested in storytelling, particularly in theater and film. I liked creative things. My mom and dad are wonderful people, but both are tone deaf, so I don't know where the gene came from.

Music has a way of getting inside all of us and lifting us up.

The financial side of Broadway is the easy part. Plenty of people want to put money in a Broadway show. The challenging part is finding the material that excites me enough to spend a couple of years of my life devoted to it.

Stephen Sondheim is calculus for actors. The words are witty and brilliant and profound but complicated.

That's what makes live TV exciting - the unknown!

I'm very competitive, and I want to be very successful, but at the end of the day, films to me are still films. I want them to be good, and I'll work the hardest, but at night, I go home to my life and my family, and that's where my heart lies.

James McAvoy is not an action star.

The notion of someone who is fitting in or trying to become part of a larger family... It's hard to separate that from my own Jewish roots.

I saw 'Into the Woods' maybe 26 times in various incarnations. I'm very familiar with it.

Musicals have long given voice to outsiders and speak of experiences in our culture and environment.

When I first started in the business, it was hardly ever done. But today, it almost feels like studios go out and preview movies knowing full well that they're going to use the information they get to go back and reshoot.

In any adaptation, the challenge is to take the essence of the original source of the material, be faithful to it to a point, but to also recognize that you're telling a story in a very different medium. It has to exist on its own, and it has to offer something unique to that experience.