I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary.
BEN STILLERYou have to stay in character in between takes.
More Ben Stiller Quotes
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It was Mick Jagger’s idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It’s a great book – really stark, not a comedy – about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it.
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God was showing off when he made you.
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I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people’s expectations of me as a comic actor.
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I don’t think it’s ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me.
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I’m just not a naturally cheery person. I’m naturally moody. I know that from people who spend a lot of time with me. People who spend a lot of time with me may not wish to spend a lot more time with me.
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The big-name stars . . . are always going to be playing what they’ve played before if they want to remain so-called A-list stars. That’s why someone like Johnny Depp is doing more interesting roles not caring about the size of the movie.
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I don’t think know if anything’s going to translate anywhere. You’re making a movie, you hope it’s going to be funny, you can’t think about how it’s going to go over.
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I think the most serious genre is the thing you’re going to get the most out of. If you’re trying to satirise a comedy, it’s hard to do that – it doesn’t really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I’m a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.
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I think you never want to have to go into the scene having to improvise; you want to make sure its working on the page. But I do like to have the ability to try stuff just in the moment, to give it some sort of spontaneity.
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I don’t have a burning desire to be taken seriously as an actor. I don’t have a master plan in that way.
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I love New York. I was sad, depressed and incredibly moved by our fellow countrymen and what they’ve done. I wanted to give people a chance to see something funny, have a distraction.
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I don’t know what that weid fantasy is that makes people go, “Oh, you must have had a great childhood.”
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When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.
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There’s always an element of fear that you need to work a lot until people get sick and tired of you or finally figure out that you’re a fraud after all!
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When I was growing up, This is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can’t go much further because ultimately it’s feeding off of somebody else’s creativity.
BEN STILLER