Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you're acting in it. And I'm inherently lazy.
— Albert Brooks
Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'
I'm not a big fan of the post-Armageddon stories, where Denzel Washington is walking around in a torn coat.
You know, I became a director out of necessity. I was writing comedies, and I couldn't find anybody to deliver it correctly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.
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.
If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.
Most entertainment is trying to get you. It's tested, like toothpaste.
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.
I'm not Elvis. I don't get chased by paparazzi.
There's always the standard six people you can hire that have played all these villains in Hollywood. Instinctively, when they come on screen, you know what's going to happen. You don't know the story, but you know what they do.
It's interesting when you're part of a group - the Jews, to be exact - that the world has had such problems with.
Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I've never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn't take advantage of a rehearsal process.
My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.
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.'
If you want to be a writer, just write. There's no magic to it.
Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.
I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.
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.
Twitter, to me, works if you're funny. Twitter doesn't work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally.
Movies are an expensive business.
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.
'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.
I take anything other than 'you big pig!' as a compliment.
I've done performances in movies that I was immensely proud of and the movies didn't take off like a rocket at Cape Canaveral, it didn't take off.
I don't want to be the one to break it to you, but the future ain't that funny.
I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.
I, sort of, got into comedy accidentally, and it got bigger than I wanted it to.
Twitter is the Devil's playground.
You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen.
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.
Nobody will leave any place unless they're forced out. That's the nature of humans. Once you're there, you're there. I've never seen anybody get up voluntarily and leave any place.
I cast unusual people in my movies.
In my screenplays - from the very beginning I've always used tape. I talk my screenplays. And then have somebody transcribe them.
You know what it is, the reason so many 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds are saying 'Drive' is their favorite movie is that 'Drive' is a 90-minute trip into what a lot of seventies filmmaking was. It encapsulates the best of a certain kind of style, and a style that a lot of people haven't seen before, with the music and the way it's edited.
I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it.
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.
How many people didn't get a part who would have been better than the person who got the part? Thousands.
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?'
I'm a strong fellow.
I like movies about failing.
You never do a movie and not want it to work. You accept whatever it is. You have to, but nobody in their right mind would not want the movie to be getting talked about at the end of the year.
I can't not put humor in a book.
As an actor, if you're just sitting and staring and you don't know who you are in your own mind, it's vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.
Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.
If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days.
