Music means a great deal to me.
— Christopher Guest
If you're deluded, you live in a place where there isn't everyone else's reality.
My passion is more specific, in the sense that I've always liked doing comedy. I've always liked doing music. I like acting. And apparently, you need those things in movies.
When you've been a character in a movie - and this has happened when we've done concerts as Spinal Tap or as The Folksmen - people see you as characters walking out of a movie. And you appear in public, then, to play, it's a very schizophrenic thing.
I've been fortunate. I get to write films. I get to write music in films. I get to play arenas wearing a wig.
I've been buying guitars since 1964, and you fool yourself into thinking it's the last one.
You know when you're young, you have this unbelievable stupidity and arrogance and ignorance all mixed in?
Ninety-nine percent of television shows, I've never seen.
I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.
People who take themselves too seriously, who can't see anything else, are usually funny.
The minute the money is more, you lose your control, so then there's no point.
I'm not really premeditative in any way at all. I come up with an idea, hopefully for a film, and then I'm lucky enough to do the film.
It's infrequent that that happens - great performances and magical cinematography and great direction.
The movies have a way of seeping out there over time. We don't put them in 2,000 theaters. It wouldn't work that way.
I rarely joke unless I'm in front of a camera. It's not what I am in real life. It's what I do for a living.
You know it's important to have a Jeep in Los Angeles. That front wheel drive is crucial when it starts to snow on Rodeo Drive.
In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page.
I like to play music, and I like to be funny, so I just do both at the same time.
I don't think we've ever known what the hell's going on when we do Tap shows. It's possible the audience are effectively getting to see more of the movie when we play. You know, they know the songs, so anything we do onstage, whether we're meaning to or not, is an extension of the film. Other than that, I wouldn't understand what's going on.
I wouldn't say I'm a connoisseur of film. I like certain films, but I don't pretend to be a connoisseur of films, no.
It couldn't have been more nerdy or bizarre, playing the clarinet. But I studied classical clarinet, went to the high school for music and art in New York City, and then found the guitar and the mandolin after it.
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.
People ask me, 'What's your next film?' And I never know.
I read kind of serious books about fairly arcane subjects.
The reason I work with the same people, it's not just an accident.
All these movies are observational comedies. I see somebody, maybe a dry cleaner, and notice how they are. Maybe I'll decide to turn a person with those traits into a studio chief.
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.'
Comedies don't get nominated for Oscars. It doesn't happen. So when we set out to do a movie, it's not what we're thinking about.
Many times I'll improvise it, which isn't done a lot in movies or commercials. But a lot of my commercials are improvised.
Peter Sellers is my great comedy hero.
Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.
I painted sets before I ever performed.
I spent more time in America, but I developed a very English sense of humour. I clicked into it deeply with Peter Sellers, who is still probably my favourite comedian.
Folk musicians have a lot of the same self-importance, but they're way more cruel and jealous than rock musicians - I know this for a fact because I used to be a folk musician.
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.
It's dangerous talking about comedy; it gets to be very tedious and presumptuous.
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.
I started on the clarinet. I was going to a music school - my mother took me - and the guy said, 'What do you want to play?' I said the drums, and my mother said, 'No, you don't. You don't want to play the drums.' So I said, 'Maybe the trumpet would be cool.' And my mother said, 'I don't think so.' And then the clarinet was handed to me.
I'm fascinated by real-time behavior.
I went to Bard College for a year. And then, even though I didn't think I should give my blood to the theater, I did go to N.Y.U., which is where I met Michael McKean.
I watch mostly documentaries and things that aren't remotely funny.
Most films, when you finish as an actor, you just go home.
I get asked, 'Who would you really like to work with?' I'm already working with them. Smart, talented, funny people, good musicians, an extended family, good friends.
The early parodies that talk-show people did of rock n' roll in the '50s were terrible. They didn't know it, they didn't like it - and that's a lethal combination.
You can pick almost any field, and there's going to be weird people.
They sell these golf aids that attach to your knee and your head and are supposed to keep your swing correct. It's futile beyond belief. I've never bought any, but I could watch those ads for 24 hours straight. People with straight faces saying this thing will take strokes off your game - that's my peculiar obsession.
What's interesting about Laurel and Hardy is that in most comedy teams, there's a straight man, and then there's the funny guy. And with Laurel and Hardy, they're both the funny guy.
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.
I'm married to the person I fell in love with.
I spent a lot of time in London when I was growing up and I've always picked up accents without even really meaning to. It used to get me into trouble as a child.
