How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.
No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.
I have a great respect for the moviegoing experience. It's such a unique thing. You're not getting up and walking around the house or flipping channels during the dull parts. You're in a dark space, and the movie fills most of your field of vision. You're surrounded by sound, and the colors are deeply saturated, and faces are fifteen feet high. If it's done well, you're really going to feel some big emotions or have some big belly laughs.
I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.
I collect spores, molds, and fungus.
We are all several different people. There are different aspects of our nature that are competing.
If you're doing six takes, instead of doing six variations on the same words, why not just throw out the words and make them up as you go along, if you're comfortable with it? It gives the movies a slightly rangier feeling, and more of an accidental feel, but it also makes them edgier.
Most comedies are calculated. They tend to pander. They're not about anything important.
It doesn't take any longer to improvise 10 takes than it takes to shoot 10 takes of the same thing. It turns out to be just as responsible from a business point of view as anything else.
I'm terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
I've never taken a script to the stage or to principal photography and said, "This is perfect. This is as good as it can possibly be." It's not Shakespeare, you know; you know it can probably be better.
I met someone who said they'd figured out my genre: "madcap redemption comedy." I'll buy that.
I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression. I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There's a lot of bullshit drama that leaves you totally cold. And there's a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn't matter what label you give it.
The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.
I learned over the years that it's easy to appear smart referencing things that people don't know.
You can perceive life as tragic, or you can laugh at the tragedy of it and that turns it into comedy. It doesn't change the circumstances.
I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.
No one will laugh at how great things are for somebody.
Everyone has experienced laughing at a funeral, and not even inappropriately. It could be a response to a moment of absurdity or some fond memory. We're human beings so we understand that laughter and crying aren't always disparate emotions.
If people offer me decent roles in good films, of course I'll take it. But I just didn't like the actor lifestyle. You end up focusing all your energy on trying to get parts you don't even want.
I've been directing for 25 years almost, and I've only directed nine films in that time because I like to be careful.
We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.
As much as I liked acting for its playfulness and the reward of hearing big laughs wash over you on a stage, I always felt I should do something that I could control.
That's one of the great things about DVD: In addition to reaching people who didn't catch the movie in theaters, you get to have this interaction of sorts.
We tell our kids that policemen are good and God protects us and our country is noble, and at a certain point - and for some it comes quite early, five or six years old - we start to realize that it's all a facade.
