Everyone is looking for the sure thing. They are looking to hedge their bet. They think the way to do that is to go with a proven quantity, a remake of something you have already seen. That is their mindset.

A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.

Audiences deserve better.

Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature ever nominated for best picture.

Dumbo... makes me cry. Every single time and in the exact same spot. I just have a special affection for Dumbo.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

I had the great good fortune to interview Peggy Lee. Her memories of working with Walt Disney and his team were warm and upbeat.

I think people in Hollywood are afraid of sentiment because they think audiences will reject it.

I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge.

I'm a lifelong Disney nut.

If I were less than honest as a critic, I think people would spot that right away, and it would destroy my credibility.

Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them.

NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.

Polar Express is not an attempt to do animation. It is a technology-based film.

Quality survives.

Television is what made It's a Wonderful Life the classic it is today.

Timing in life is everything.

When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment.

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don't just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.

Movie theaters still exist in spite of all of the alternatives that are available, video and video-on-demand and DVD and streaming video and all of these things.