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 ROACHI’m pretty opinionated sometimes although my political views change all the time, too. So I’m not very zealous.
More Jay Roach Quotes
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The 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.
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Sometimes perfecting the one thing can be the enemy of getting any traction on anything else.
JAY ROACH -
I 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.
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For 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.
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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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It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he’s such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.
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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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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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[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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People 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.
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Mini-Me was the pint sized clone that was the perpetuation of Dr. Evil’s own legacy [in Austin Powers]. That concept earned the sequel.
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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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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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It’s hard to imagine in this day and age the accent in Dalton Trumbo speaking voice, the Mid Atlantic mixture of an English and American dialect, so flowery and oratorical that it almost sounds theatrical. It would be uncool today, no one would ever speak that way.
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I’m developing some other things in other genres, including one dramatic piece. So, anything’s possible.
JAY ROACH







