Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that’s really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type of comedy.
JAY ROACHI love Dr. Evil [from Austin Powers] as a walking, talking, narcissistic manifestation of everything screwed up about human existence – his desire to take over the world, and have the world reflect his own power lust.
More Jay Roach Quotes
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In his life, [Dalton] Trumbo uses wit and comedy to fight these very high-stakes battles.
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Hedda’s Hopper attitude was ‘once a Commie, always a Commie.’
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When I’m shooting, really the audience I’m thinking the hardest about is that first test screening audience who I want to like the film and that first opening weekend audience.
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[Dalton] Trumbo himself was a terrible Communist.
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I like to shoot a lot of choices. I like a lot of stuff – and so I push to go faster, to shrink the time between the takes so that the takes are what you’re spending all your time on.
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One of the series of decisions that the great screenwriter John McNamara made was about who to depict. [Ronald] Reagan had a role in HUAC, he was a friendly witness, but never went over-the-top about it.
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[Lyndon Baines Johnson ] technique in negotiation would be that he’d lean into you and take away your personal space, it didn’t matter your party affiliation when he was trying to convince you of something.
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Sometimes you fall in love with some things and then you fall out of love with it.
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I hope we’re all kind of influencing each other now to keep the quality up on those things. They seem to be getting better and better and better as there’s not only sort of a film geek audience, there’s also a general interest in the overall film consuming population.
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John Wayne was never shy about that fervor, but because he was never overly zealous about his politics, and of course his status as a movie, he was embraced by both the right and the left.
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This is a movie version of the play [All the Way]and when Bryan [Cranston] was on stage the bigness of the man was played to the back of the house. When we turned the cameras on that, it changed a bit with close-ups, but we got just as much power in that beautiful intimacy.
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I think sequels should be earned and we won’t do it unless the script is better than the first one.
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That’s why we had Louis C.K. portray the harder line Communist, to accuse [Dalton] Trumbo of being a hypocrite.
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I wish I was sort of someone like Woody Allen who can stage everything in one long master shot, no coverage; just, you know, that’s it.
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But I always reassure them that as far as my contractual rights can go, I will protect them and make sure that they have approval over every bit of it so that they know I won’t show something that’s embarrassing.
JAY ROACH