Todd Phillips Quotes

You set the tone on the set that you want to see in the film.

There's a darkness under 'The Hangover' because ultimately there's a missing person and it's not really that funny. There's a sort of darkness under it that I love, and still people are laughing as hard if not harder than they did in 'Old School.'

I think people like comedies and I think concept driven comedies seem to be working when it's a clear concept and you deliver funny stuff.

I think a lot of American comedies tend to apologize for their bad behavior in the last 10 minutes of the movie.

Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.

I take it very seriously, music. I think it's one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.

You're never nice to your friends. You're nice to people you don't like!

To make a movie about mayhem, sometimes you have to go to mayhem.

I was taught that you didn't want to be part of the group - that it was better to do your own thing.

It's all about escapism. That's essentially what all movies are about. It's a vicarious thrill.

There's such an awkwardness to most heterosexual male relationships. You see women who are friends, and they kiss each other good-bye, and they're just so much warmer with each other. But there's this thing with guys where, even between best friends, there's a standoffishness.

How many days do you have that are just purely dramatic? How many days do you have that are just purely comedic? It's usually a combination and I think that's what real life feels like.

I find I like to work with a lot of the same actors, because I find that there's sort of shorthand there, and there is this unspoken trust, both ways. They trust me and I trust them. And I know what I'm going to get from them, to an extent. It's just fun, kind of creating this little family.

You know, if I started worrying about what the critics think, I'd never make another comedy. You couldn't pick a less funny group than critics - you couldn't find a more bitter group of people!

When you work on a movie or a TV show, you're a family, so if something that's a two-minute thing in the movie is causing a rift in the family, you also have to think about at what point do you fight this, and at what point is this rift worth having in this very small, very tight group of people who are just there to make something great and funny.

I just thinks it's interesting what it takes an actor to find their characters through the wardrobe, or the hair, or the way a character walks.

All my movies, as I get the ability to do it, they tend to go a little darker, a little darker.

I really got into filmmaking through photography.

I feel like movies when they work they'll find an audience.

To me, the script is a living, breathing organism. Comedy is something that is ever-changing and ever-flowing with the vibe and the mood of the movie.

You know, because you outline a movie, it kinda comes at the same time. I mean, there are days when you are just concentrating on 'ok, let's worry about just comedy today,' and there are days when you're like 'you know what, we gotta just beef up the story.'. But, it's not like process wise it's that technically separate. One informs the other, so they kinda all happen together ideally.

I love confidence in a guy. I don't have it, but there's nothing sexier.

Not every movie has to serve as every audience member's need for completion.

Directors tend to be more underrated than overrated because it's a quiet job and people don't really understand it.

I was raised by my mom. She taught me how to be a gentleman; nobody in the movies taught me. I think people are raised by their parents. If you're raised by movies, it's a whole other set of problems. I don't think it's as simple as me saying movies are meant to entertain, but I certainly don't feel moral responsibility in putting this out in the world and being like, "OK, this is going to affect how guys make decisions because they see some of my films or whatever." I just don't.