When you do a movie as opposed to a TV show, it's always tempting to think everything has to be big and exaggerated and spectacular. And in fact, a lot of the funniest comedy films have been very intimate.
We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore.
When I first went to college, I went to Western Michigan. I had been rejected by a bunch of schools for theater. I was like, 'I'm obviously not cut out for this, so I might as well just go into film.'
Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.
The period from 2001 to 2005 was really tough. My films were not working even though there was an acceptance of a model. I was depressed but did not cry. I cry when I am happy.
My mother is like a character who escaped from the set of a Fellini film. She's a whole performing universe of her own. Activists would run a mile from her because they could not deal with what she is.
I was really into films when I was younger, but I feel like a bit of a phony sometimes - I started acting because I didn't know what else to do. I filled in all these university application forms and honestly didn't want to do any of the courses.
I'm not going to go to the local theater to spend $12... when I can get a screening copy of a film. I don't get screeners myself, but I can borrow from my friends or go to their house to watch.
'Scary Movie' was a different type of comedy than I'm used to. I've mostly done sitcoms, so working with David Zucker, who wrote the film and who directed the last two 'Scary Movie's and 'Airplane' and 'Naked Gun,' was a lot of help.
I think that the wonderful advantage we have in the film of being able to cast a girl as young as Emmy and which we couldn't do in the theatre of course because no girl of 16 or 17 could sing 8 shows a week, couldn't sing two.
Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil - of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn't think of myself as evil - just realistic.
It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn't even read the book. So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I'd certainly like to do it.
My observations are not bread crumbs. They do not dissolve. They are on record, on film printed in books, and found on the Internet. I am happy to share them. For this I was born.
Oftentimes, when we think of 3D, we think of things coming out of the screen, but actually, you've got this zero, this negative space, what they call the negative space, which is the scene, what's being filmed in the positive space of the audience. A...
Encouraging people to believe in it was the most important thing of all. It's one of the reasons I was always uncomfortable whenever film crews came on the set to shoot things. I didn't want our make-believe to be exposed.
I was in Milan, and somebody gave me a Trussardi diary, and I thought 'Genius.' Inside I put the Polaroids, how much film I shot, who I shot with. This way, for billing later on, I had all the information.
I see a film or a TV series or a play as being this machine. It sounds quite robotic, in its description, but it's basically a machine and you're just one of the cogs that goes in it. You're not the biggest one, and you're not the smallest one. Every...
When I first did 'The Fast and the Furious', I didn't want there to be a sequel on the first one. I thought, 'Why would you rush to do a sequel - just because your first film is successful?'
Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It's always the unspoken word and what's happening behind someone's eyes that makes it so rich.
I wish I'd done 'Dumb and Dumber.' I was offered the part, but I don't think I'd have been better than Jeff Daniels was. Another film I wish I'd done was 'Jerry Maguire.'
When I was nine years old I use to copy - not trace - the covers of the Donald Duck comics. Many years later I became a close friend of Jack Hannah, the director of the Donald Duck film shorts.
