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 ROACHPeople have an actual bias against there being some kind of popularity for political films, and when they get acknowledged, it helps keep the conversation going.
More Jay Roach Quotes
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I’m developing some other things in other genres, including one dramatic piece. So, anything’s possible.
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From our perspective now, there is a not a huge understanding about the totalitarian Communism that Soviet Russia practiced during the 1950s – it was an atrocious system.
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I really enjoy the consolation when I’m having to cut loose stuff I love, of saying ‘Well, at least it will make it onto DVD.’ There’s a couple of scenes which I liked very much, but couldn’t fit them into the film that are on there.
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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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[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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I don’t stay in the genre because I just like all stories that have a smart hook in them and I can find a comic way through if it’s a comedy or a suspenseful way through it if it’s a drama.
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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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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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[ Dalton Trumbo] always said he fought so many fights, all seemingly different, but all about the concepts of fairness and justice.
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Once you’re a public figure, there’s a certain amount of privacy you do give up.
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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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There’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.
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In his life, [Dalton] Trumbo uses wit and comedy to fight these very high-stakes battles.
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Sometimes perfecting the one thing can be the enemy of getting any traction on anything else.
JAY ROACH