Since the Oscars are on tonight I thought it would be befitting to list a few quotes Ive come across in my time as a film maker that reflect what Hollywood is all about – the biggest entertainment Bank in the world.

• Hollywood is a dream factory, and for each dream that comes true, a million nightmares are created. For anyone in the movie business, regardless of his or her job, the dreams are the pictures you work on. The nightmares are what you go through to get them made.

• The concentrated presence of so many desperate dreamers, the overwhelming ambition to score, makes you heady. Waiters and waitresses who want to act; actors who want to be stars; chauffeurs who want to write screenplays; screenwriters who want to direct; delivery boys who want to be agents; agents who want to produce their own movies; producers who want to run studios; studio executives who dream of discovering some waiter or waitress who will be another Hit.

• A motion picture is a living thing. It has birth pains and its growing pains, infancy, adolescence, middle age; it becomes an individual, for better or worse, and then comes inevitably the end. The good picture becomes immortal. The rest of them lie, unmourned, in the vast cemetery of the late, late show.

• For 364 days of the year, the assorted members of the Academy-actors, producers, directors-devote every breath of their living being to the task of putting bodies into seats, and then, on just one day of the year, they are suddenly ambushed by the question, yes, but is it art? so what happens is that they dont vote for the best film, they vote for the film that most fully reassures them that they are not voting for the wrong film. Historical films are more reassuring than fantasy films, films that make a decent amount of money are more reassuring than films that make truckloads of money.

• The golden rule is that films must have an uplifting ending, therefore:

Hollywood films reassure; independent films unsettle.

• Its not difficult to get a film made. Getting a film seen and connected with an audience,  thats hard!

Enjoy the Oscars.