Albert Brooks Quotes
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If you paint, write, do mosaics, knit - if it's solving that part of your brain saying, 'I need to do this,' you've won.
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Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'
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I've heard people say, 'There are no bad audiences,' but that's just not true. There are people who just shouldn't be together in a room, who produce a really bad audience.
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I'm not Elvis. I don't get chased by paparazzi.
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Once you sign on as an actor, you know, you don't go to the editing room, you don't see how they cut, you don't see how they score, you don't see how they cast the rest of the movie.
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In the course of my movies, the financing and the releasing were always the tough part. Because I loved the creative; I loved the writing. I loved the making of it. Because, I guess, I never had the giant blockbuster, I never got that sort of ease for the next one.
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I'm a member of the Academy, but I don't know who all the other Academy members are. It's not like a politician who knows who is in the Iowa caucus.
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I like the acting. It's how I started, and I sort of feel that if I don't give it a little shot now, and I go back, then I'm pretty much done with it. I mean, at what age am I going to do it at? Although, when you see Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow doing it, I guess the answer is 80.
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If people don't love what you're doing, that doesn't mean you're wrong.
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You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.
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All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
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'Finding Nemo' has spawned so many sort of emotions over the years. I don't even know that you could really understand exactly what parents and kids are seeing in it, but they can see a lot of different stuff.
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One thing about Los Angeles is it feels like it's not new. It feels like it's already been built, and it's deteriorating, except for the places they're trying to make nicer. But in general, you drive all through the city, and the city feels like it was new a long time ago.
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By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five movies a year and if they're dreck, it's nothing.
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Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It won't be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.
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There've been a few mother-daughter movies that are somewhat realistic. But the mother-son movies are more comical than realistic: 'Throw Momma from the Train,' 'Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot.' You don't sit in the dark and go, 'Oh my God, that's my mother.'
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I come from the place where I am thinking 'I have put my blood on the pages.'
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My dad died right after performing at the Friars' roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I have that tape somewhere. There's still a lot of good jokes in there. I mean, that was 1958.
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The first act is writing, the second act is filming, the third act is releasing. If you have to partake in the third act, it hurts the first act of the next one. It's like a prizefight. You get punched.
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Twitter, to me, works if you're funny. Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.
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I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on 'Keene at Noon.'
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I did years of summer stock. I sort of only wanted to be an actor. And then at 19, I was funny, and I had some of these bits that I did for friends, and I immediately could get on television.
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Even in my comedies, I don't take anger as a joke. I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it. One of the things I like about a character: I always think it's fascinating when a character can turn on a dime and go from one emotion to another. I like watching that.
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I made my living in comedy, but I'm not a silly person. I've got all these sides to me. Even in my movies that I've written myself, the characters sometimes border on great anger or nutsiness or other kinds of behavior. I'm not just doing fart jokes for two hours.