Christopher Guest Quotes
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I myself delve into very arcane things.
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The reason I work with the same people, it's not just an accident.
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I haven't had to do anything outside of show business my whole life. I've never been a waiter. I've only worked and gotten paid. It hasn't been a classic example of someone slogging through the business.
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The main thing that's important to me is getting to do whatever project it is the way that I do what I do, and that's different. To go to an entity - whether it's a traditional film studio or some newer company, or HBO, Amazon or Netflix - they would have to know that I need to work the way I work.
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If you don't like the people, you're just doing a sketch. Which, in most cases, is comedy minus some emotional backbone.
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People want me to be funny all the time. They think I'm being funny no matter what I say or do and that's not the case.
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You can't improvise without a skeletal structure; you can't just go in and start talking. This is a very misunderstood craft because no one else makes movies like this.
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To me, what I realized when we were doing 'Spinal Tap' - and the four of us wrote that - is, really, the core of that is the relationship with the two guys who grew up together and that strain when the girlfriend comes in. If that wasn't there, it's a very different movie. Then it's just bumbling guys stumbling along.
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In 'Spinal Tap,' there's the fake historical quality of 'Stonehenge.' It's something the musicians look at with a mystical reverence. In folk music, it's the seriousness with which these people approach their 'art.'
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The most important thing about my life is this integrity, and you can't lie to yourself.
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I like to play music, and I like to be funny, so I just do both at the same time.
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I don't read anything about my movies before or after I do films, or any part of show business. I think that keeps me in a kind of place where I can do the work that I need to do.
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I would overhear these conversations of people who show purebred dogs. They spoke about them as if they were their children.
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I don't make movies that make fun of anything.
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Nothing is cut while I'm shooting. I edit between nine months and a year, and usually have around 80 hours of footage I have to get down to an 82-minute movie.
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If you're deluded, you live in a place where there isn't everyone else's reality.
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I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.
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I watch mostly documentaries and things that aren't remotely funny.
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What I'm doing in the work I do, I prefer not to just have a series of jokes. It's nice when audiences can connect with the characters as well.
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As an actor, I trust my ear.
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'Waiting For Guffman' was different right away from 'Spinal Tap,' because we didn't show the interviewer. That person became invisible immediately. That created a different way of tuning it and ultimately editing it.
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When you hear someone talking in a restaurant or overhear someone talking on the street, there are very different patterns of conversation than you would hear in a conventional movie.
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I'm a fly fisherman. I make flies. They're imitations of insects at different stages in their development.
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I didn't go to film school. I had been an actor in movies, I had been in plays, and then I just sort of jumped into it.