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Harold Prince
Broadway Producer and Director
Harold Prince: They stayed with me, those 175 investors, for most of my producing career, when I was producing and directing my own shows, which is something Abbott had done. I directed and produced the shows, as in Cabaret. The point is that they didn't need us on Broadway. They had Rodgers and Hammerstein doing just fine, and Feuer and Martin doing just fine and Leland Hayward and the Theater Guild. They didn't need us. So when we decided to do the first show, we had to analyze what can we do that will impress people immediately that there are new boys in town and that we found a different way to invent the wheel. And we figured that the way to do that was to do a show as elegantly as it required, but cheaper in terms of cost than anybody was doing them, and get the money back to the investors as soon as possible.
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Harold Prince
Broadway Producer and Director
I think it's very important in the commercial theater to return the investment. I know there are fewer and fewer people who agree with me, because the investor now is so wealthy in his own right that he's the producer. So you look at a Broadway show today, and you will see a whole lot of names over the title, and really who they are is the people who put up the money to put the show on. They can take a loss if it doesn't happen, and it's a shot at a Tony Award and all that sort of thing. They enjoy the theater, but it isn't the safeguard that I think It doesn't restrain you, the way it did us, to have to make it a good investment. Let's see if I can make sense out of this. After a bunch of successes at the box office, it gave us the right to have failures that did something we divined was important for the musical theater form. In other words, you could say to the investor -- and I would do it in a letter -- "I am not certain you'll ever see this money again, but you've been doing just fine," and then we'd do Follies or Pacific Overtures. You'd do a show that you had to do for artistic reasons, that in fact, ultimately, in the case of both of those shows, are somewhat historical, but they never returned a plug nickel to anybody. But the investors didn't care, because they took pride in being part of the process.
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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
The responsibility is to be accurate and fair. The twin pillars on which good -- never mind great -- reporting, are built: accuracy and fairness. They work together. I pause to say this because I don't want to be misinterpreted. If one aspires to daily journalism, which was always my aspiration, and it's still my first love -- I do a lot of different kinds of reporting, including trying to write books now, but daily journalism is my biggest -- speed is also important. You have to be able to think fast, write fast. But that does remind me, speaking of writing, the bedrock of the craft is writing. Anything in journalism, that's where it begins. And that's pretty much what it's about. That's the bedrock of the craft. A lot of people who aspire to jobs, or careers, lifetimes in radio or television, tend to overlook that fact, and it is a fact. The best producers in television, almost without exception, are good writers.
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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
Dan Rather: I don't consider that I have a stressful job. I've had stressful jobs and this is not one of them. And I say this with humility. I have worked stripped to my waist in 100-degree temperature working for 12, 14 hours a day for below minimum wage with no benefits, thank you very much. That's stress! And I've worked a derrick floor with slippery equipment all around you, and back-breaking work that you can only do about four hours at a stretch. That's stress! This job, I don't have stress. But I think I know the spirit in which you asked the question. There is a responsibility of being as accurate, being as far as you can be, and there is the responsibility of people listening and watching, and depending on you to be trustworthy, and to deliver work of integrity. That's pressure. Maybe that's synonymous with stress. And sometimes you feel that pressure. It's the pressure to deliver for people who are depending on you. But the way it translates to me, it's also the pressure of that voice within you, and I have this voice, and it speaks to me continuously. "Listen, this is what you dreamed of doing, now you're able to do it, and you've been able to do it for a long time" What a tremendous lesson that is. So you have to do it to the best of your ability. Just pretty good is not good enough. I'm a perfectionist without apology. I've never achieved perfection but I'm always trying, always striving for perfection. I do think that I owe that to the audience, but I don't see any stress.
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Dan Rather
Broadcast Journalist
There are people who take the position that they want you to report the news the way they want you to report it and if you don't report it the way they want you to report it, then they're going to make you pay a price. They're going to mentally, symbolically, hang a sign around you that you're something bad. And that pressure comes from a lot of directions and a lot of different ways. And I would say at the network level at least, resisting that pressure, having enough experience and enough sense to know the pressure is there, and to have the courage (and I think that is the word) to resist it when it's inappropriate, is a very special kind pressure, a unique kind of pressure that works on you, both your mind and heart, in rather insidious ways. And I found over the years that among the biggest challenges in my job is to resist that kind of pressure.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: I don't work for the critics. The critics are something that happens to the work. If I try to guess what the critics might like I know my producers do that all the time. I've been a producer, and I am a producer, but I do the things I like. I do the things that really affect me. I do the things that mean something to me, where something of me is being articulated through the work. I say what I have to say. Now that may be accepted, it may not be accepted. I say it the best I can, and if they don't accept it, okay.
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Lloyd Richards
Tony Award-Winning Director
Lloyd Richards: The arts are a reflection of our society, of its concerns, of its aspirations, of its possibilities. In every respect, it is also a challenge to our society. Those are its roles, and sometimes those roles become crusty. It was Ed Steinmetz who said a good writer is as a second government in his own country which is why the government generally supports mediocrity rather than real talent. What is he saying? He is saying that the role of the arts is to challenge, is to question. It is not simply to pat on the back and support and wave. There are many, many responsibilities that it has, one of which is to question our society as it exists, and lead it to the possibility of making other choices. Sometimes, it isn't to say that every artist is correct in his projection, but at least the challenge is there. Answer it again. There are times when you step on a toe, and if that toe is as influential as a few toes were, then you may have a bumpy time. But that does not change the role of the arts. And any true artist will not be changed by it.
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