Albert Brooks Quotes
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Movies are an expensive business.
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If I'm going to act in someone's movie, I want the movie to be interesting and be able to get a couple of solid doubles.
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The idea behind 'Defending Your Life': Imagine if you had to sit in a courtroom and watch your life. I don't care who you are - if you committed a crime and you had to have all of your emails searched and made public, who on this planet could survive that? Nobody.
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What's interesting about books that take place in the future, even twenty years in the future, is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future, just like there is now.
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If I start a film of my own, then what I eliminate is acting in other people's movies. Because once I start, and I go raise the money, it's about two and a half or three years, and I can't stop. I have people hired. I can't say, 'Ooh there's a good part called 'Drive'; I'll see you in three months.'
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I'm not a big fan of the post-Armageddon stories, where Denzel Washington is walking around in a torn coat.
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Normally movies have the same people they use over and over for everything. It's called typecasting. They don't like to take chances. They'll go with the guy they had before.
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Wouldn't it be great if cars came equipped with screens like that thing they have in Times Square that spells out the news? You could punch out your own instant messages: 'Will the small red car with the ugly driver please stay a little further behind?'
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I like movies about failing.
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I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you're younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That's what people do. And you can't really fix anything. It shouldn't be a massive difficult thing every day. Life's difficult enough.
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I've always liked to think ahead. Not stupid-far ahead. A hundred years doesn't interest me. But 20 years interests me, and more for what happens to humans as opposed to things.
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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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I don't see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don't put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where 'My Dinner with Andre' made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do 'Meatballs.'
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I've always been the king of silence. I've always been a minimalist comedian. I've taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that... I've always done 'less is more.'
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I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?' And if you're able to say yes, in any field, you've won. 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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I studied acting at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh because I figured a good comedian certainly could act.
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If people don't love what you're doing, that doesn't mean you're wrong.
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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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I don't think the goal is, 'How big a star did you ever become?' I think the goal is, 'Were you able to express yourself?'
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Even if you didn't see the movie, you'd see two words you'd never seen put together before - comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly - it's the least offensive word in our language.
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'Drive' came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, 'You've always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.' My ears just perked up.
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I don't want to be the one to break it to you, but the future ain't that funny.
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I guess 'The Player' was a pretty good L.A. movie. And 'Chinatown.' Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.
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My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.