In this episode, Kevin Goetz is joined by Hollywood legend Peter Bart. Over an influential career spanning over 50 years, Peter Bart has played a key role in shaping modern Hollywood. He began as a journalist at The New York Times before becoming a studio executive at Paramount in the late 1960s and 70s, overseeing movies like The Godfather, Rosemary’s Baby, and Chinatown. He later served as Editor-in-Chief of Variety for nearly 30 years. Now in his 90s, Bart continues to be a prominent voice through his writing for Deadline. With his vast experience and perspective, Bart remains a living legend in the world of movies.

Peter shares how he got his start in journalism. The New York Times sent Bart to Hollywood to cover the rise of TV, and what they saw as the decline of cinema. By covering Hollywood, Peter became fascinated with the economics of the movie business.

Bart bought rights to novels and quality scripts like The Godfather. He shares how he wanted to make it an art film, but its popularity pushed the studio to make it more commercial. Bart shares how he and Evans often made movies without studio oversight in order to take creative risks on movies like Rosemary’s Baby, Paper Moon, and Harold and Maude.

On The Godfather:

We decided we would make an art picture, not a gangster movie. A friend of mine named Francis Coppola, a beat-up old actor who had gotten cold named Brando. We set out to make a $6 million, not a $60 million art movie called The Godfather.

Bart shares that after 18 years making films, he wanted to tell the story of Hollywood’s shifts – filmmaker power transitioning to dealmakers/businessmen running studios.

On returning to journalism:

By the eighties, when the Variety thing came up, the power had shifted from the filmmakers to the deal makers, and there was a whole new story about the fact that suddenly the studios were being owned by people who themselves had never seen a movie. They were in it because they saw the profitability in the new film business.