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.
JAY ROACHOne 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.
JAY ROACH[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.
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.
JAY ROACHThe commentary track became a lot like the movie and there are some funny, long, awkward pauses that you can tell we’re just trying to find stuff to say. None of us had gotten to really talk about the movie until that moment and they were in New York and we were in L.A.
JAY ROACHI 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.
JAY ROACHI 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.
JAY ROACHBut 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 ROACHHedda’s Hopper attitude was ‘once a Commie, always a Commie.’
JAY ROACHI’ve recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.
JAY ROACHTo his credit John Wayne was open about it, he even portrayed a member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in a film called ‘Big Jim McClain.’
JAY ROACHFor Bryan [Cranston ] to go back in time and become this larger-than-life and somewhat theatrical guy, who performed his ideas and rhetoric in public in a melodic and flashy way, was a bit of a risk.
JAY ROACHSometimes perfecting the one thing can be the enemy of getting any traction on anything else.
JAY ROACHThe success of the second ‘Austin Powers’ caught us by surprise a little bit. We had decided not to do even a second one, unless the audience wanted it and we could do something better.
JAY ROACHOnce you’re a public figure, there’s a certain amount of privacy you do give up.
JAY ROACH[ Dalton Trumbo] always said he fought so many fights, all seemingly different, but all about the concepts of fairness and justice.
JAY ROACHThere’s people who actually have a whole science devoted to what makes a sticky meme and that idea of that question of why some ideas about how civilizations work catch on and others don’t.
JAY ROACH