Quotes

I never work just to work. It's some combination of laziness and self-respect.

[Remarks to the New York Times on the ecumenical popularity of Groundhog Day (1993)] At first, I would get mail saying, "Oh, you must be a Christian because the movie so beautifully expresses Christian belief". Then, rabbis started calling from all over, saying they were preaching the film as their next sermon. And the Buddhists! Well, I knew they loved it because my mother-in-law has lived in a Buddhist meditation centre for 30 years and my wife lived there for five years.

[on whether he and Bill Murray would consider doing a third Ghostbusters movie] My attitude is generally like Bill's old attitude -- there's no point unless it has some interesting quality or something to say about the subject. Personally, I don't rule it out. I'm skeptical, but maybe it'll work.

Everything we see has some hidden message. A lot of awful messages are coming in under the radar - subliminal consumer messages, all kinds of politically incorrect messages.

Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest - people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we've got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago.

I'm at my best when I'm working with really talented people, and I'm there to gently suggest or guide or inspire or contribute whatever I can to their effort. It's not like I'm gonna tell Robert De Niro how to act - but I could provide him with useful anecdotal material from my own life or other people I've known, or actual psychological information, or insights into his character. The technique's up to him. But, there are ways to gently urge an actor to pick up the pace or slow it down or focus more, to go bigger or smaller. Some actors are very open right at the beginning - they say, "You only need four words with me: Bigger, smaller, faster, slower.".

Well, I never made big films to make big films; the scale's been appropriate to the content.

Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view.

[on the death of his friend Douglas Kenney in 1980] Doug probably fell while he was looking for a place to jump.

It's hard for winners to do comedy. Comedy is inherently subversive. We represent the underdog as comedy usually speaks for the lower classes. We attack the winners.

The best comedy touches something that's timeless and universal in people. When it's right, those things last.

[on directing Robin Williams and Eugene Levy in Club Paradise (1986)] I'd say, "Robin, could you play that scene faster?" And he would say, "Faster isn't a direction." So I'd say, "Your character is feeling a sense of urgency right now." By contrast, I went to Gene and said, "You did that scene in a minute-twenty. Could you do it in a minute?" And he said, "Sure".

At SCTV (1976), we were virtually self-directed. Whoever wrote the piece pretty much determined how the piece was going to play. We directed each other. Joe Flaherty kind of appointed himself my director. He would tell me stuff like "Open your eyes real big".

I'd like to think I'd never do a gratuitous fart joke.

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.

I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.

As much as we'd like to believe that our work is great and that we're infallible, we're not. Hollywood movies are made for the audience. These are not small European art films we're making.

You probably can't name more than a handful of comedies that would qualify for Best Picture. I can think of a lot of comedy screenplays; Woody Allen has had numerous nominations for his screenplays. But most comedies are calculated. They tend to pander. They're not about anything important.

I can barely watch Caddyshack (1980). All I see are a bunch of compromises and things that could have been better. Like, it bothers me that nobody except Michael O'Keefe can swing a golf club. A movie about golf with the worst bunch of golf swings you've ever seen! It doesn't bother golfers, though.

With both Caddyshack (1980) and Vacation (1983), it's not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn't see the need to make another Vacation movie.

My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.

Multiplicity (1996) was a movie that tested really well. People seeing the movie really liked it, but then the studio couldn't market it. We opened on a weekend with nine other films.

I really only worked for about a month on Meatballs (1979). What happened was that Ivan Reitman figured out that studios wanted to meet everybody involved with National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) except the producer. So he thought he'd better start directing.

Analyze This (1999) is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing. I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense.

I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.