Peter Riegert Quotes

I want to be in R-rated movies.

Unfortunately part of pulp is that there is sex, there is violence. It's not a kids' show. It's an 18-and-over audience - like anything cable. I see some things in Game of Thrones that turn my hair gray. It's the way the industry has gone.

'Off With Their Heads' by Frances Marion. I love a showbusiness autobiography - and this one resonates because it's written by one of the great Hollywood screenwriters.

I used to be able to pitch them on the basis of the zombie action, and I could hide the message inside that. Now, you can't. The moment you mention the word 'zombie,' it's got to be, 'Hey, Brad Pitt paid $400 million to do that.'

I've wanted to come to the U.S. since I was 8 years old. Every single year, my mom and I watched the Oscars. I always told her, 'I want to do that when I grow up. I want to tell stories; I want to be an actor and director.'

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' is my favorite movie, and it's why I wanted to be an actor.

I've been given that gift of working with Jack Nicholson and James Coburn and certain people who just out of nowhere break into stories - talking about working with Alfred Hitchcock or Kubrick. That's my real reward of my career.

I think everything you do, whether it's low budget things when you're first starting out or full feature films or when you're working with Hollywood, you're always learning, all the time.

Films are meant for the masses, for the purpose of entertainment.

Like a lot of people, I sold my first script in graduate school at UCLA, a 'Joan of Arc' for producer Joel Silver.

I think what Hollywood is learning at large is that there is profitability in stories that are culturally specific and that you can only address the universal through the specific.

The only reason I came to L.A. in the first place was to tell stories and make movies. Whatever way you can do that - if you can do that - at whatever level, that's rewarding.

I've pitched movies to all of the major studio heads in my time.

No one is bigger than cinema.

I'm loving the fact that Hollywood is telling trans stories.

Writing a screenplay is daunting for sure, but I think that Hollywood needs them, so if you can manage to do that, there's certainly a value within it.

Writing is the life blood of everything in Hollywood. Without writers, there are no scripts, no acting work.

I was fortunate to write pretty much a year out of film school and start making movies in the Hollywood studio system. But with each progressive film it became more frustrating not being able to speak and say things I wanted to say.

I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.

When I stepped into the Lifetime role in 2010, I did a listening tour of what was going on for women in this country. There was such a parallel in Hollywood with women talking about how there are stories that are not getting made and that talented young women are not getting the opportunity to direct and write.

Hollywood and film portray who we are as a people and what we value as a culture.

Screenplays are the currency of Hollywood.

Hollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

It's not about Hollywood, it's always about a good script for me.