To me, I've never understood why there is any question about are women as funny as men.
I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.
People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.
I'm trying to think if there was ever the Lenny Bruce-y, observational, George Carlin kind of magician: "You know what I hate is ..." I don't think that ever existed.
If we really talked about what's wrong with you, you'd need a 7-1/2-hour movie and nobody would know what category to put it in!
People talk about universal intelligence ... I'm reticent to believe almost anything, just because my parents weren't religious at all, but that's when I feel it. People talk about being in the "flow."
The only thing worse than a crappy TV show which Paddy Chayevsky couldn't have conceived in his worst nightmare is two megacorps fighting over who thought of the crappy show first.
I remember the Time review [on the Hit and Run]said that there wasn't one laugh in it. And I had watched the movie 50 times with audiences, and it always played great. There was certainly a moment where you could tell the audience was like, "Wow, this is really getting weird."
I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny.
The great thing about Eminem is, he's just hysterical. You forget, people like Eminem because he is riotously funny. And he's a great actor.
I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.
Nobody's going to like my next movie because they liked Trainwreck [2015]. It has to work on its own, and that keeps it really scary.
Well, every movie is an experiment. And the only way you can grow at what you're doing is to take chances. You can't try to stick with what worked last time.
There are only so many hilarious actors so when they cross-pollinate, people assume it's always the same actors and directors.
I love magazines and film critics, so I eat it up. I'm not one of those people who says 'I never read anything.' I generally read all of it.
It's what I always dreamed of: that you can make TV and everyone would get out of your way and you follow your vision without watering it down.
There's something honorable about holding out for love and not breaking up for the sake of the baby. I see people get divorced, and there is a part of me that thinks, I wonder how hard they tried?
I'm making a movie about relationships, and I'm surrounded by guys scared of talking to girls.
People like everything to work out, and anytime you don't make everything work out perfectly, you really are fighting against what most people are going to the movies for, especially in the summer.
I think watching too much TV as a kid led me to being very uncomfortable in new situations. To this day, when I drop my kids off at school, I still feel like I'm in 9th grade and I'm uncomfortable and insecure. Like anyone is paying any attention.
Some people make movies and think, "Well, I'll just keep asking for more money if this isn't enough." And then there are other people, like Clint Eastwood, who always come in under budget.
The Cable Guy was underbudgeted, so it was always a debate about whether we could have more days or certain things that we needed, because the budget was determined before the script was written. So that made it a hard production on everybody. But it's also a funny thing, because it's one of those movies that cost $40 million to make and made $100 million around the world, but at the time, it seemed like a disaster that it didn't make hundreds of millions of dollars, because Jim was on such a tear. But it was actually a successful movie.
I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.
Sometimes, something seems dead, and then out of the blue, someone just figures out the way to fix a script and it goes.
I remember the review from Michael Wilmington in Chicago, and Gene Siskel wrote really smart reviews where I thought, "Oh, they totally get what we're attempting to do."
