I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

Too many talk about a company's leadership, referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that: senior executives. Leadership doesn't automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.

Nothing so enchants attorneys general, their eyes generally fixed on higher public office, as slinging accusations against successful financial executives. Preening press conferences and fawning media coverage are virtually guaranteed, whether or not the charges have substance.

Anyone who has followed the U.S. economy in recent years can tell you while corporate America and their wealthy executives have recovered from the last recession, middle-class families have not. About 95 percent of income gains between 2009 and 2012 went to the top one percent.

The film industry is driven by male narrative. Heads of studios are often men, teeming with male executives everywhere you look, and so the narratives we have the screenwriters usually for male leads. Women tend to be second string: the girlfriend of, the secretary who becomes.

Over a period of time, if you have a successful show, then you have a devoted audience. I feel you owe something to them. That goes for everybody - writers, camera operators, actors, studio executives, etc. Sadly, I've realized it's a responsibility that very few people live up to.

You can get a good handle on a company's culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, 'We value our employees' but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin.

With the rabbit as our emblem, when we got to the point in 1960 of opening the first Playboy Club... one of our executives suggested the possibility of a bunny costume. We tried it out, and I made some modifications - added the cuffs and the bow tie and collar - and the bunny was born.

Twitter could save a lot of money by writing its executives' names on their doors with pencil instead of fancy placards. Like an episode of 'Suits,' Twitter execs come, go, change jobs and disappear under black clouds every few minutes. Office administration costs must be astronomical!

Women are usually only interesting to studio executives when they are fecund, between the ages of 15 and 30. I decided to get through the really tough patch, around 50, by just cutting my price and playing ten years older. I didn't want to have to wait until I was an old lady to play one.

I found Hollywood pretty bruising and uncreative. The executives are all in thrall to the boss, and spend their times double-guessing him or her, and trying to remember what he/she said and then applying them to the script, whether it was useful or not. They're all in fear for their jobs.

The only way the gender divide affected me was the social things the younger guy executives could do with their bosses. I don't know what went on in the clubs, because I didn't go. I made sure my work was stellar, and that compensated for whatever social time we weren't spending together.

The dirty little secret on Wall Street: Eighty percent of the Wall Street executives' and their spouses' donations go to Democrats. It's like they've got some kind of little sweet deal, where we'll call you fat cats and demean you and stuff, but you will get richer than your wildest dreams.

Every time a film comes together, usually the studio executives come up for a day to the set. If you're out of town, they'll fly in or wherever you are - the cast, the director, the producers - all get together and have a big dinner and celebrate the fact that we're about to start shooting.

Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For scientists, or Supreme Court justices, or chief executives, or the woman who wants to learn to fly F-l8s off an aircraft carrier, it works differently.

In years of interviewing presidents, prime ministers and chief executives all over the world, I can remember only a handful of times in which a leader has said: 'I don't know' in answer to a question. Perhaps everyone I have ever interviewed knows everything about everything, but I doubt it.

The really cool challenge of '24' was learning on camera how to be a dramatic actress. The biggest difficulty was the industry side of things. I was very lucky that I had Joel Surnow, one of the creators of '24,' in my corner. Early on, the Fox executives couldn't believe that I was on the show.

When I was a CEO, I thought I understood private equity. I didn't. And what I've learned since my retirement, and since becoming directly involved in the world of private equity, points the way to a new career path for thousands of talented senior executives - and a new engine for value creation.

I think maybe the most important thing that we have to say is that people don't often talk about network executives being brave. You don't talk about them as having integrity and a higher purpose, because it's a job... except for Bob Greenblatt. He is a theatre person. He loves and understands it.

In another time, another world, each studio made 200 movies a year and had 20 executives. Today, a studio makes less than 20 movies a year and has 500 executives. They own too many parking decks and too many billboard companies. They're awash in overhead, and it's pinning them down, and they know it.

On the Web you have to sum up what your piece of content is in one link or nobody is going to watch it. That's the same thing I've been hearing from TV executives - is we need a program that you can have on the side of a bus and someone can watch it go by and get what the show is and want to watch it.

I don't understand executives that pit women against each other, the fact that they brought in 'Body of Proof,' Dana Delaney is a friend of mine, and the two of us were just rolling our eyes, it's like, of course, you finally have two great female leads and you're going to put us on against each other.

The great problem with corporate capitalism is that publicly owned companies have short time horizons. Unlike a privately owned business, the top executives of a publicly owned corporation generally come to their positions late in life. Consequently, they have a few years in which to make their fortune.

In Montana, no one, including out-of-state corporate executives, has been excluded from spending money - or 'speaking' - in our elections. Any individual can contribute. All we require is that they use their own money, not corporate money that belongs to shareholders, and that they disclose who they are.

I've been in WWE for 22 years and reached a point in my career where, within the locker room, I'm one of the people that guys come to if something needs to be discussed. I'm also one of the people that the WWE executives, if there is a problem in the locker room, I'm one people that is consulted about that.

The Academy just reflects Hollywood. And until we break those barriers, until we have African-American or minority studio executives, 'til we have people who are greenlighting movies with African-American actors - the Academy is not going to change until Hollywood changes, so we have to start with Hollywood.

I spent a lot of times sitting in big rooms full of a lot of men and executives thinking, 'What would Oprah say right now?' and trying to channel that as hard as I could. And mostly that was just about having the confidence. If this woman did it, it can be done. And there's no reason for anybody to stop you.

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.

Perhaps storytellers don't need to care as much about the future as executives and investors do. After all, isn't it possible that technology will enable storytellers to connect directly to their audience without the need for anyone to share the programming decisions or the profit in between? Don't bet on it.

John Davidson is one of the premier executives in the National Hockey League. As we continue to build a team that can consistently compete for the Stanley Cup, John's knowledge of the game and his experience and passion for the Rangers logo make him the ideal choice to oversee our Hockey Operations department.

There are companies trying to build business within Saudi Arabia, and what they find is that if they try to bring on locals and teach them how to become senior executives, they just don't show up to work. They are not predictable as to when they'll come in and how much of their hearts are into that opportunity.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

Accountability is a two way street. We can't just make it easier for us to fire people; we must make it easier for us to hire people. It takes VA an average of 240 days to complete the hiring process for executives joining VA from outside government. We are losing talented people because it simply takes too long.

'Freeing' a literary work into the public domain is less a public benefit than a transfer of wealth from the families of American writers to the executives and stockholders of various businesses who will continue to profit from, for example, 'The Garden Party,' while the descendants of Katherine Mansfield will not.

Texas has no income tax, which is a big draw for corporate executives who do business there. But it's hardly tax-free. The property taxes are high for a Southern state. The sales taxes are high. One study found that the bottom 20 percent of the Texas population pays 12 percent of its income in state and local taxes.

When I was a youngster, I wrote all this music - it just came out of me - and I think record executives were like, 'Oh, wow, he's a genius, let's give him a million dollars!' But the minute I started producing the records, they'd be like, 'Oh, my God, you're terrible! You're all over the place! We can't market this!'

For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played.

How will I become Meryl Streep if I can't even get in the door with Jennifer Lawrence for the same role? I think that it starts with casting directors and executives and studio heads opening up their minds, and really putting an effort into being trans inclusive in their projects, whether they're trans-specific or not.

I fundamentally believe that your words have so much credibility if you're not taking money upfront. I feel really comfortable pushing actors and pushing executives and pushing marketing people when we're not going to benefit financially unless the movie works. I feel like that makes the playing field so much more level.

With so much money invested in their most promising projects, Hollywood executives will understandably do everything in their power to make their products a success in the marketplace. Therefore, the most expensive films often also get the highest marketing budgets, and are slotted into the most favorable opening weekends.

One of the great things about Silicon Valley is, irrespective of how competitive you might be with another company or how closely you might be working with that company, there's a great sort of give and take, and camaraderie from - between - some of the executives in the valley and some of the other investors in the valley.

I remember coming up in the business and seeing how the grind turned some executives into grizzled cynics. And I vowed to never become that guy. I have always believed it's incumbent upon network brass to bring a wide-eyed optimism to the chairs they rent. Talent deserves that. And frankly, the jobs are just no fun otherwise.

When Donald Trump is in charge, all that counts is ability, effort, and excellence. This has long been the philosophy at the Trump Organization. At my father's company, there are more female than male executives. Women are paid equally for the work that we do, and when a woman becomes a mother, she is supported, not shut out.

I wrote 'Thelma & Louise' in 1988, and we shot it in 1990. Everyone kept saying, 'This is so groundbreaking... this is going to change the landscape,' but I don't see that result at all. When we saw some female studio executives, we were hopeful that more women would be hired as directors, but that didn't really seem to happen.

I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties - whether they're songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.

Some Nickelodeon executives were worried about backing an animated action show with a female lead character. Conventional TV wisdom has it that girls will watch shows about boys, but boys won't watch shows about girls. During test screenings, though, boys said they didn't care that Korra was a girl. They just said she was awesome.

I'm no good at anything but comedy, which I think I'm good at. I'm absolutely no good at networking; I'm terrible at acting; I'm terrible at dealing with executives; I'm terrible at collaborating. And I say whatever I want to say. But I think I'm good enough at comedy that I can survive. And I don't really have an ambition for money.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families - and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States.

Share This Page