If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money.
I’ve always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.
I don’t see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don’t put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where ‘My Dinner with Andre’ made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do ‘Meatballs.’
When I die, if the word ‘thong’ appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I’ve screwed up.
Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn’t cool to say, at a young age, ‘I want to be a comedian.’
I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you’re younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That’s what people do. And you can’t really fix anything. It shouldn’t be a massive difficult thing every day. Life’s difficult enough.
I, sort of, got into comedy accidentally, and it got bigger than I wanted it to.
I come from the place where I am thinking ‘I have put my blood on the pages.’
Twitter, to me, works if you’re funny. Twitter doesn’t work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.
I guess ‘The Player’ was a pretty good L.A. movie. And ‘Chinatown.’ Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.
‘Drive’ came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, ‘You’ve always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.’ My ears just perked up.
I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it.
I did years of summer stock. I sort of only wanted to be an actor. And then at 19, I was funny, and I had some of these bits that I did for friends, and I immediately could get on television.
My roots were in acting. That’s all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn’t cool to say, at a young age, ‘I want to be a comedian.’
If you want to be a writer, just write. There’s no magic to it.
In the course of my movies, the financing and the releasing were always the tough part. Because I loved the creative; I loved the writing. I loved the making of it. Because, I guess, I never had the giant blockbuster, I never got that sort of ease for the next one.
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that’s all people know how to do when they’re improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.
Movies are an expensive business.
My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don’t have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you’ll be the richest.
Nobody will leave any place unless they’re forced out. That’s the nature of humans. Once you’re there, you’re there. I’ve never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.
I cast unusual people in my movies.
I never, in anything I’ve ever done, tried to get you to like it. I was never going to succeed at that. That’s not the way most entertainment is made. Most entertainment is trying to get you. It’s tested, like toothpaste.
My dad played a character on the radio called ‘Parkyakarkus.’ A Greek-dialect comedian. He did Friars’ roasts and wrote material and made people laugh that way. But he wrote his own shows with other writers.
My humor is traced with dark – I’ve got dark patches all over the place.
I’m a member of the Academy, but I don’t know who all the other Academy members are. It’s not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.
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