Top 40 Jeff Baena Quotes

I try to keep everything under wraps. Everything I can do to make sure people don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, I will do it.

You show a movie to your friends when you’re working on it, but you don’t have any real objectivity. You just don’t know. So that moment when it’s shown for the very first time at Sundance, it’s just terrifying. I’m so anxious. And then every screening is different.

If something’s really selfless, then there’s really no value in it for you… there’s only value in it for the world.

One of the interesting things about the ‘Decameron’ itself was it was written in the Florentine dialect as opposed to the Latin vernacular – and that was mainly to have it be a piece of literature for the people as supposed to some kind of highfalutin’ canon.

After doing ‘Life After Beth,’ which I think had one line that wasn’t scripted, everything was scripted so that it sounds natural, and I went to such great lengths to create dialogue and to come across the way that people wouldn’t sound like they were on the nose.

Not to be negative, but I think the biggest lesson is don’t trust anyone.

My pet peeve is when people criticize things when they’re just trying to have a conversation.

I wanted to do something a little bit more feminine after my second movie, ‘Joshy,’ which was so masculine.

Comedy is all about rhythm and context, and there’s all types of comedies, and it’s about finding that right brand, that consistency in tone.

I know, when I was in film school, some of my films were silly, but a lot of them were more dramatic. I don’t think I intentionally set out to do comedy stuff. I guess that’s a consequence of coming up working with David O. Russell and skewing toward those sensibilities.

I like collaborating with actors. I love finding that moment where it all comes together.

I hate when people eat food and talk with their mouth full. I always cover my mouth when I eat, but I’ve had it where there’s little bologna bits flying on your food.

I don’t try to make actors play crazy characters. I like where there’s a certain element of who they are and truth to their performances.

I’m just trying to get an exposure and make my day.

I don’t like the idea of seeing a movie and it feels comfortable because you’ve heard it before.

If it feels like you’re aiming for something too familiar, and you’re not having a primary new experience, then what’s the point of making that movie? It’s been done before, so try to find something new out of it.

When you have new people coming in and you sort of want to show them the ropes, it’s always easier to have people that know the process and are able to sort of just do their thing, and then everyone can kind of follow their lead.

You can’t avoid being an egotistical person and ultimately somewhat narcissistic. You can try to curb it by recognizing that behavior. But at the same time, your repetitive behavior has its own psychology, and it’s impossible to get out of that.

‘Motherwort.’ ‘Great Leopard’s Bane.’ These are awesome band names.

Everything kind of has a message in it.

For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it’s sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America.

For me, the whole idea of performance is not being self-aware, and then sort of just experiencing.

When people are committed to things, and the world view they have is no longer in alignment with our world view, then it becomes funny.

I think one of the bigger issues with modern-day people is that we don’t give enough credit to people from history as being real. We almost treat them as these rarified beings that didn’t exist the way that we do with emotions and urges and drives.

People were always like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to be working with your girlfriend? Are you freaking out? Is that going to, like, destroy your relationship?’ I think it emboldened the relationship.

It’s life, so you’re a constant evolution of tragedies and achievements and ups and downs. You can probably get a little bit more immune to things, but whatever is the most amount of pain you feel at any given moment feels like the most amount of pain you’ll ever feel.

I grew up in suburbia, so it’s a world I’m familiar with… but in my experience, all the families that I grew up thinking were the perfect families who kept it together… all their secrets would come out, and it’d be something dark and disgusting beneath the surface, so I wanted to exploit that.

If you look at zombie movies throughout history, they’re always making adjustments. Even the idea of the virus zombies and the back-from-the-dead zombies… there’s been tons of tweaks.

In Judaism, the temple was the most holy site in the world. But if you extend that argument as a metaphor, and you say ‘The world is a holy place,’ and you’re treating this holy place like a money-lending psycho, then Jesus says, ‘This is hypocrisy!’ and he’d point it out and flip it over.

I think there are a lot of actors who are excellent at cold reads, and they go to an audition, and they read the part and nail it, but then when it comes to the performance, they don’t have something.

Having been through breakups when you get back with the person thinking it’s going to work the second time – it never does.

It’s so rare when marketing and press doesn’t ruin your movie.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio… there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

I remember when I was in film school. It was my second year, and some kid did – had this really over-religious symbolism; like, it said ‘John 3:16’ and had angels falling over, and it was just this insane – it wasn’t that great.

In my mind, if you went back to the Middle Ages, in Italy they’d be speaking Middle Age Italian. And at that point, it would obviously be indecipherable for us, but for the people of that time, it was just normal talking.

I am interested in all aspects of filmmaking, so I have an opinion on every aspect, so sound design, score, cinematography, editing – all that stuff I have experience doing myself, so I had a very strong idea of what I wanted, and I got, for the most part, people that were able to articulate that idea, which was nice.

I’ve been a writer for years, but it was mainly as a function of trying to be a director, so I just got work as a writer. I want to keep directing.

Aubrey Plaza is absolutely amazing.

My first job after graduating was working with Robert Zemeckis. I got a job a week after graduating and moving to L.A. So I got to work on ‘What Lies Beneath’ and ‘Castaway’ as a PA, which is basically like a gopher.

I went to film school; I went to NYU film school.