Top 45 Paul Feig Quotes

The hard thing is getting people to come to the theater to see something, no matter if it’s good or not.

I can’t impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.

As tempting as it seems to wear tennis shoes with your tux, don’t do it. I think it looks ridiculous. If you’re 14 years old, maybe give it a shot. In general, don’t portray anything that says ‘I’m too cool and I don’t care.’

Wearing a tuxedo isn’t as simple as it sounds. I’ve been to a lot of award shows in Hollywood over the years and have seen some pretty sad tuxes. It’s surprisingly easy to go off the rails.

So many stars who have shows are intimidated by having people around them be funnier than them. It’s always the unsuccessful ones. Look at Seinfeld – he’s great because he let everyone be hilarious.

Women’s humor seems to be a little more supportive. It’s just kind of trying to make the other one laugh through funny voices and kind of talking about other people. I respond to that. I feel less like I’m going to get beat up in a room full of women than I do in a room full of guys.

I always hated high-school shows and high-school movies, because they were always about the cool kids. It was always about dating and sex, and all the popular kids, and the good-looking kids. And the nerds were super-nerdy cartoons, with tape on their glasses. I never saw ‘my people’ portrayed accurately.

I’m glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it’s much more satisfying – I love acting and I still do, but it’s much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.

Man up and add a tux to your wardrobe. Just find one you like and get it well-tailored to your own measurements.

You want a happy ending, but not such a ridiculous happy ending that it doesn’t mean anything to anybody.

I was brought up in a very religious household and did a lot of praying throughout a big part of my life and always thought of God as being not only a powerful father figure and the ruler of all time and dimension but also as a friend with whom I could chat and ask questions to and get advice from.

Everyone takes pause at 40. It’s the age you have to assess everything in your life. It’s the fictitious marker that’s always coming up when you’re young. The world really does look at you to kind of have it together by 40, and be successful by 40. Whatever success means.

At the end of the day, I just want a movie that’s great, that people are going to love and laugh at and be affected by, and also have an emotional journey.

What you want is the thing that critics love and audiences love, but that’s the hardest thing to do.

Forty is the line of demarcation that says you’re an adult now. You’re an adult, so don’t pretend you’re a kid anymore.

The awards world can be ridiculous, but I’m not one to bash it. I love awards! When I’ve been nominated for Emmys and when I won my DGA Award, I couldn’t have been happier. I always liked getting a gold star in class.

What I do as a director is really create a safe environment that everyone can feel very comfortable in and experiment within so that they don’t hold back anything. You never ever want someone to go, ‘Oh I shouldn’t have done that.’ There isn’t anything you shouldn’t try. If it’s terrible, who cares?

I’ve always enjoyed people studying themselves in the mirror, and I also enjoy those ‘walk and feel bad’ shots. I like anything that isolates people and focuses them on themselves, or makes us focus on their faces as they’re going through something.

I was a standup comedian, which is kind of like writing and directing yourself.

What’s great about the geek spirit is that life never seems to stop us, and they never seem to kill our enthusiasm, our optimism and our hunger to experience the world. We keep our sense of humor, we protect our dignity, we talk to our friends about the experience and then we start again fresh the very next day.

One of the biggest things you have is your reputation and your reputation with knowing what’s good and what’s not good.

In my years of acting, the one thing I was never able to do convincingly was to laugh on camera. Fake-laugh.

I love funny people, and when I’m with funny people, or people who are amusing in their weirdness, I love it. Because that to me is funny, as opposed to someone who stops and says, ‘Hey let me tell you a joke.’

My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.

At the end of the day, successful box office just means that more people saw what you did and liked it, and that to me is the most important thing. That a lot of people saw it and liked it.

A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.

For years, it’s driven me crazy that women don’t have better roles, especially in comedies. I know so many funny women but I always felt… misogynist streak is too strong a term – but a dismissiveness.

Where there seems to be a difference between guys being nuts and women being nuts is that guys are much more open in calling each other on stuff; lots of insults and dirty names. Whereas women will talk frankly and honesty, but there also seems to be more passive aggressiveness.

Throughout my teens, I just wanted to go somewhere I could wear a Donald Duck pin and no one would care.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve felt comfortable in a suit. It all started when my mom bought me a three-piece Pierre Cardin suit. I wore that thing everywhere. Eventually I realized I was going to be the kid who got beat up in school, but I kept wearing it.

Yeah, you know, I like to throw myself on the sword so that others may feel better about themselves. I tell the stories that you all want to forget, but when you remember it, it hopefully makes you laugh.

What I don’t like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there’s no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don’t want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here’s the epiphany scene and then the movie’s over.

We didn’t used to be so precious about women in comedy back in the old days.

I’m a pretty feminized geek, you know? I have that point of view, I grew up around a lot of girls, so I’m pretty sensitive to that. But I don’t dare say ‘I know how women think.’

I always feel in improv that nothing is ever as good once it’s repeated.

What’s so great about working with really funny women is that vanity comes second. Whatever makes it real and funny, they’re going to go for, and it’s just great.

At the end of the day if you want to entertain people, you’ve got to take your ego out of the equation.

When I went to high school, in the late 1970s, disco was in full swing and anyone who was into it dressed the part. I know I did.

I’ve never been to a class reunion or anything because I’m always afraid of that one – there’s going to be some ‘Carrie’-like incident.

‘Constitutional’ is just a real pip of a word. Positively rolls off the tongue. In fact, it’s downright fun to say. ‘Con-stit-too-shun-al.’ It’s the verbal equivalent of skipping down the street with an ice cream cone in your hand. It’s like a semantic bag of Lays potato chips. You simply can’t just say it once.

I love the pictures of Old Hollywood, seeing the directors dressed in suits and ties. Even the grips would be wearing ties. But the biggest thing is when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be an adult, and I think what happens with most guys is that no one wants to be an adult anymore. So they’re dressing like kids.

I have an inability to enjoy things, but that’s why we’re in comedy. If we were happy, we wouldn’t be funny, I guess.

The greatest way for people to experience a comedy is to go in not knowing anything about it. But because of marketing, it’s impossible. Marketing meaning that in order to get people to come you can’t just go, ‘Hey, there’s a great movie – we’re not going to show you anything from it but trust us!’

If you’re not connected emotionally to a story, then you’re dead. You’re really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart.

There’s nothing worse than the sequel that’s a letdown from the first movie.