“I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can’t truly define why something succeeds.”

I don’t know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don’t think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

I don’t know that you can do it as a satire. I mean, the business is crazy enough as it is. It’s like doing Wag The Dog – we took a thing that was almost completely absurd on one level, and then ultimately those things came about.

You do understand that you can’t force the situation, but in terms of how you edit, you can define that to take the audience along, whether it be a storyline or a character moment that we can play out. The more experience you’ve had, the more beneficial it is, period.

The interesting thing about movies, it’s not always – y’know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

No one really has the power, and everybody’s trying to get through the day, and everybody’s nervous and desperate.

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you’re in the process, you’re there.

I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting – you look for the behaviour that’s not the one you expect.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

There’s no downside to having too much experience.

As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.

I think we are seeing a radical shift in the business in general. The studios are making much more of the real big extravaganzas and there are other kinds of films that are coming out. I think you are going to begin to see more diversification that we’ve seen in the past.

I’ve had a lot of movies that didn’t get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.

[Donald Trump] went on to, you know, otherize Muslims, otherize Latinos, otherize women, that he built out from that. And it can be true that a unique, you know, individual like Barack Obama can succeed in spite of that and still be the case that that force is quite, quite strong.

The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.

It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns

You will be judged by what you succeed at gentlemen, not by what you attempt

He means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford to wait and to go slow.