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’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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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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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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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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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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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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To 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.’
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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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Dalton Trumbo was constantly criticizing the membership [in the Communist Party], and was opposite to being a loyalist.
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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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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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When Dalton Trumbo and his friends joined the Communist Party it was 1943, and Russia was our ally in World War II. This was connected to a very popular movement of artists and intellectuals at that time towards anti fascism, and an alliance with the union movement.
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I’ve recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.
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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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When something so unjust as the black list happened, [Dalton Trumbo] would come to life in a certain way.
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[Lyndon Baines ] Johnson is a big and larger-than-life guy, we just tried to give him the dynamic range that he actually had.
JAY ROACH