At several points, there can be dozens of people who need you to have an answer. Your job as director is to tell everyone if what they're doing is within your vision. You always have to be able to convey that vision to everyone making the movie with you. The question could be about an actor's character, and if their improv or idea works in context with the overall story, or your beliefs about their character. It could be making the decision to move to a cover set because the forecast is rain. I make sure to surround myself with smart and highly competent professionals, and then take everyone's advice. I like the idea that's best for the movie, even if it's not mine.
Absolutely. Weirder still was that my brain, slowly bleeding from a minor hemorrhage caused by an AVM (different from an AMA) was causing me to go insane, so that added to the madness. You truly don't even question your sanity when you are losing it. It's such a bizarre thing....
I have to say that the only good reviews I've gotten in my movie life were for The Emperor's New Groove. I really, really liked that movie. It was very hard to do (which sounds crazy, because it's only the voice) but the backstory was, it was originally called Empire of the Sun. And it was myself and Owen Wilson as sort of a prince and a pauper trading places type thing. And we got a year and a half into it, and Michael Eisner from Disney looked at a rough cut and said "I don't like it." And they got rid of everybody but Spade, and they had this dopey llama idea. It sounds like they just made it up on the spot, and he liked it, and somehow those guys put together a whole new idea, and it was...
One of the best times I've ever had making a movie. Kind of hard not to have fun with that crew. Anything Craig Robinson says makes me laugh. I think Channing Tatum is most like his character.
when i did pootie tang i signed a deal that i served at their pleasure and had no creative control. It was worth it because I got to direct a studio movie at a young age and I learned. I don't sign deals like that anymore though.
There’s another quote that I like, this one’s a little long, but I think it’s good. It’s by a guy named John Garvey: ‘I am increasingly convinced that the need to be right has nothing whatsoever to do with the love of truth, but to face the implications of this means accepting a painful inner emptiness; I am not now what I sense somehow I am meant to be. I do not know what I feel from the bottom of my heart, I need to know. The beginning of wisdom is not to flee from this condition or distract yourself from it. It is essential not to fill it up with answers that have not been earned. It is important to learn how to wait with that emptiness. It is the desire to fill up that emptiness which le...
Finish them! DOn't be the guy that writes half a script. Write a full script or make a film and post it! you have so many cool avenues these days! But no matter what, finish! Even if it's bad, then you have something finished to work off of and show others and get their thougths! Finish, then show others and take their precious free thougths!
Oh ! Oh ! Humphrey. Cary Grant. Ida Lupino. Joan Fontaine. Charles Laughton. Myrna Loy. Carole Lombard. James Mason!!!!!!! We don't have enough time to play this game. Jason Robards!
Someone asked "will there be a Garfield 3?"
I don't think so. I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it.
And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen.
I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind.
So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought "he's great, I'll do it." So then it was months before i got around to actually doing it, and I remember i had to go to a screening room in somewhere, and watch the movie and start working. And because they had had trouble contacting ...
It was incredible. The most exciting condensed period of my life and I can't imagine I'll ever do anything more exciting and I'm actually fine with that -- I don't know what could top that fantasy-camp of a filmmaking experience. The only stressful part was when we'd all go out drinking after a day on set, and I'd ask Quentin Tarantino a question, and he'd start to answer, and I'd feel this enormous pressure to REMEMBER EVERY SINGLE SYLLABLE because film history was literally being dictated to my brain, and I was the only witness, and I was two drinks in and feared I wasn't going to remember a sentence that a friend or historian would ask me for someday. It was the coolest thing ever, quite ...
The Joe Dirt wig was itchy. And one time, I walked away from the set at a TV studio when we were doing some Dennis Miller stuff, and I got lost, and I had my janitor's uniform on, and the security guard wouldn't let me back into where I was supposed to go, and I didn't have a cell phone, so I had to sit there for 15 minutes until some PA came to look for me, and I had to explain to them that I was dressed as a janitor with a wig on, and that was an actual story, that sounds fake but it was funny to me. Long story short: I loved the wig, I thought it was hilarious, it was hard to wear all summer but it cracks me up. I think it's in some vault somewhere in the Smithsonian right now, surrounded...
No, it’s not. There are so many pitfalls when a movie comes out that it’s hard to enjoy it when it comes out. Obviously if a movie does well and is critically well received I like it, but I’m so needful of it, that kind of response that it doesn’t feel good. It just feels less bad, you know? Because it feels really bad when people say mean things. Really, it feels bad. And I kind of wish that it didn’t, but it does for me.
Chris was always doing that bit to me at work. We shared an office, and you had to walk through our office to get to Chris Rock & Adam Sandler's office, so these 2 microscopic offices were back to back, and Chris' desk was behind mine, and he didn't really know how to write, or read, really (kidding!) but he would come in bored, because I would have to write my sketches to try to get on but they would always let him on, so he would get behind me and be bored, everyone would write him sketches, and he would say "Davey… turn around" and I said "if this is Fat Guy in a Little Coat I'm not turning around, it's not funny anymore." And he would say "no, i've got a whole new thing I'm doing."
And ...
Question: You wrote and directed Pootie Tang, as I'm sure you are aware. Do you plan on Writing and Directing anymore more films in the near future? Because that would be fantastic.
Answer: I would love yo make more movies. That is a FUCKING HARD JOB though, dude. Just to get it made. You can't even do anything else while you're tyring to get it made and then you probably won't. It's heart breaking. Then it takes a good 2 years to make and finish the movie then it maybe won't come out and then maybe it gets changed and worse than the movie not getting made, you made it, then it got changed into something you hated and then came out.
yeah. that's hard. if i can get a deal to make a movie th...
I love when something unexpected happens in a scene. Like in Trainwreck when Lebron reaches for his wallet and acted liked he didn't realize he forgot to bring it in the restaurant.
this movie is funny and uplifting but it is also an honest look at grief and loss. I think we all relate. It is an uplifting film. I hope it males people feel less alone in their struggles.
When you do a movie, and you use a song, or a band, or an image on a t-shirt of a band, there's a quiet clause stating that you can't say anything negative about them. And it's sort of just understood if they're selling you a song, or letting you use a t-shirt, you're going to be respectful. So that line was not in the script, but I asked Kid Rock to yell it to me when I ran off, so I could make an extra whimper, like that was a real dagger. And so when we did it, we couldn't put it in the movie yet until I talked to Def Leppard's manager to make sure that was okay. So I called someone, cuz we originally couldn't put it in, and said "hey, is there any way we can do this" and i had to explain...
Well probably the most horrifying thing was that there was something called Nero Edict that was distributed by the Fuhrer, Hitler, which said that if the Reich should fall, or if Hitler was killed or taken, that all the art that was stolen should be destroyed. And a fair amount of the art was burned, things were burned that will never be returned, a lot was burned even before the Nero Edict because of the modern art, that was degenerate.
In the hunt for the art, they found hidden in the salt mines where the art was hidden, they found the ENTIRE gold supply of Germany.
ENTIRE. Like they had moved their gold, their Fort Knox, into a mine, and this small group of guys searching for art in a m...
That every moment in life is precious? That the gifts of your relationships with others, don't miss it. That was one of the hardest movies I think I ever did in my whole career. Every day was literally hell, because of the nature of the subject matter, dealing with death and being in hell literally. When I watched the final movie, I felt it was extraordinarily beautiful but I felt disappointed by the ending. There was a different ending that they shot that I felt was much more true to the story. It was about reincarnation, basically, that they were going to meet again. The movie ended with two babies being born simultaneously, one in Bombay and one in the United States, and they held them up...
Seth Green