You need to make things and not be so precious about whether they're any good or not. Because I have a secret for you: they're not good. They're flawed, and you need to find out what the flaws are as fast as possible.
— Phil Lord
You can't play not to lose. You kind of have to put your ego aside and accept the fact that careers are long, and there's gonna be stuff people like and stuff that people don't like, and you try to get better every time, and always put something out that you're proud of. And let the chips fall where they may.
'Zorn' goes to some pretty ridiculous places, but the real comedy is coming from these little observations about life that are not as outlandish as some of the bigger moves in the story. This is a guy who has magical relics and fights weird monsters and is also dealing with very basic work and family things.
That's the beauty of the animation process: It takes so long, you have so many chances to improve it.
We like the challenge of a story around the most generic, forgettable man in the universe.
We are so aware of how silly our movies are as we're making them.
There have been funny sequels, but I don't know if there have been that many that feel like they're - you know - they're just as great a movie to watch, just as fun an experience but different.
I apologize for the song 'Everything Is Awesome.'
It was kind of fun to make 'Cloudy,' which has such a stylized look, and then do 'LEGO,' which, while it's stylized, is also photo-real.
We try to stay as open-minded about casting as possible. When you're getting things down on paper, you might even avoid writing down a name, let alone if they have blonde hair or this or that, to stop.
I think we're going to be very embarrassed in a few years when we see a lot more women film-makers. People will look back and ask, 'How did it take so long for you to figure this out?'
I would love to wear, like, twee Wes Anderson suits everywhere and not get made fun of.
One of the things that has proven true in our career is that even if you take something that's as straightforward and classic as a father-son story, you can express it in a way that's totally unique to you.
You need pencil miles to be a great artist, animator, or filmmaker, and the sooner you start making mistakes, the quicker you learn.
Having to top yourself is a good problem to have.
The hardest thing to do with an animated movie is to not make it feel synthetic: to feel like it's handmade, where you can sense the human hand in it.
I'm a big 'Omega Man' fan because of how insane he seems, just driving around in that car really fast. It has, like, a very strange tone to it.
You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.
In animation, you do so much planning ahead of time; it has to be so precise.
Male relationships are deeply emotional and hard to talk about.
I wish we had fewer bad words in 'Jump Street.' That would probably be better.
A sense of humour is never a handicap.
Some people survived the neolithic age by being brave, others by being cowardly and smart.
As the son of a Cuban refugee and cousin and nephew to many Cubans on the island, I cringe when Americans visit Cuba for a fun island vacation.
I was short until my senior year. It's just, like, your social status is so dependent on how quickly you hit puberty, basically.
I wish we were smart enough that, every time we had an idea for a script, that it was great right off the bat.
I don't want to fail by being conservative; I want to fail by doing something no one has ever done.
Batman is the ultimate in white people problems. It's like, 'Oh, I'm so rich and handsome, and women like me, and... something about my parents!'
It's easy to forget that when you take out all the shark stuff, 'Jaws' is a really beautiful human drama.
I'm a big believer in the transformative, exponential power of art, like a reverse pyramid scheme.
Seriously, if 'Superbad' doesn't happen, I don't think 'Jump Street' ever happens.
We try not to have any vanity or judgment about genre or type of film.
The great ideas start flowing when you stop thinking about the obvious way of doing it.
That might be my epitaph: 'It wasn't as bad as I thought. Here lies Phil Lord.'
I wish I could remember people's names. I'm supposed to remember so many.
