If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.
ADAM MCKAYThe easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way you can break the ice.
More Adam McKay Quotes
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It’s crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.
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The way you really stop Al-Qaeda is by stopping their funding. It’s not by carpet-bombing or land invasions or anything.
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So you’re doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it’s working, and at that point, it’s 50/50 as far as what’s funny and what’s working.
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I went to Temple University, and had to get loans. So I grew up in a world where I saw the government helping individuals pull themselves up, and saw it work very successfully.
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I’ve gotten like five laughs in movies, just off guy hugs.
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You have to be able to fail with the improv. You have to not care.
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There’s such an aggressively a political movement in the US that anything that smells of being political – even the term “political” is so ridiculous, when you think about it.
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As for movies, what’s great about comedy is that if your movie gets laughs and makes money, you have freedom.
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I think what’s dangerous [about comedy] is that you’re coming into the room announcing your intentions.
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Celebrities and ‘famous’ people are just regular folks. I know, it’s a shocking and potentially dangerous statement.
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When you screen it the first couple times, you’re just trying to get the movie to work, trying to get the story to flow, trying to find out where your areas are where you have enough breath to laugh a little bit.
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Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.
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I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it’s there and to push it just a little bit faster.
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Every time a congressman or pundit says its ‘class warfare’ to increase taxes on the wealthy, it’s a massive lie.
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Blanket cynicism toward government has always existed.
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As far as how much you listen to the audience, you listen to them when they really hate something.
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Everyone is sort of in their own little area counting lines and no one talks when film’s not rolling. There’s constantly actors coming to me back behind the monitor screaming at me, “Why did my line count drop?” It’s a nasty tense environment.
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The one thing for sure is, I don’t ever want to waste a movie. I don’t ever want to waste effort.
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It’s one thing to break stuff and damage people’s possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that’s dangerous comedy.
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I have certain beliefs about how people should treat employees and how companies should be run, but I was really surprised though this process to learn that those beliefs are actually good business.
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Benito Mussolini created the word ‘fascism.’ He defined it as ‘the merging of the state and the corporation.’ He also said a more accurate word would be ‘corporatism.’
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There’s nothing the people love more than a Federal Reserve joke.
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I got the sense that Alabama is a place where people don’t want handouts and don’t much care for people talking out of the side of their mouth.
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We’re always looking for the backbone, the central idea, and once you have that you know everything can circle around it.
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There are so many shoot-’em-up, action, jingoistic TV shows and movies that are made every year. I think the final line is that Hollywood is populist.
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It’s one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America.
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