I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.
I used to be married to a woman who pursued every spiritual trend with tremendous passion and dragged me along. I don't believe in anything. I'd seen mediums and readers.
With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.
My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.
My job is to come up with something that you like and you agree with that you would play wholeheartedly. If we disagree, I may not be doing my job correctly.
I'm not a believer in the pratfall. I don't think it's funny just to have someone fall down.
I have no trouble selling out—I’m a benevolent hack, in a certain way—but I want to pander for something I believe in.
I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.
You can't not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you're on.
First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that's not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?
Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.
Where's the great pay? Where's the travel? Where's the Winnebago, Goddamnit!
We were tremendously encouraged by the testing of Analyze That. Audiences loved it. They were telling us that they liked it as much as the original. We recorded the laughs in the theater.
Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage... there's no telling him what's funny.
If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.
It's like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it's going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there's going to be Some action.
