Albert Brooks Quotes
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I take anything other than 'you big pig!' as a compliment.
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I never wanted to be a director.
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My father was very sick around the time I was born. The doctors thought he wouldn't live. He did recover, but I don't remember him as very active. I do remember lots of schtick around the dinner table. Generally, he and my brothers and I were all laughing at the same thing my mother did not find funny, whatever that was.
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The people on this planet that are trying to live their life, that aren't trying to destroy things, are in the 99.9-percent majority.
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My roots were in acting. That's all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn't cool to say, at a young age, 'I want to be a comedian.'
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If you don't succeed on your own ground, then there's no reason to succeed. Unless, of course, you really want a boat. If you're a person who feels that with a yacht, everything will be all right, then you should do whatever you have to and get the yacht.
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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.
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I like to do things that I want to see myself. With 'Defending Your Life,' I wanted to see some aspect of death other than angels and the thing that 'Ghost' was about, because that didn't make any sense to me. So that's the reason: it fills a hole.
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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.
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I just like making people laugh, and buried in that I like to bring up topics and start discussions.
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This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she's limping, and she's still living, but she doesn't look at me like she knows. She's not thinking what I'm thinking. It's a cruel trick that we all know the ending.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I wrote this book, '2030,' and I was careful in the book not to overdo the future because I don't think it comes that fast.
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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.
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My dad played a character on the radio called 'Parkyakarkus.' A Greek-dialect comedian. He did Friars' roasts and wrote material and made people laugh that way. But he wrote his own shows with other writers.
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I guess I was the class clown - with a name like Albert Einstein, you don't hide in the back. I'd read the school bulletin to the class, and I'd add activities and make stuff up. It was good, a good 10 minutes every morning.
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If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.
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How many people didn't get a part who would have been better than the person who got the part? Thousands.
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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.
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My audience has lots of people between 20 and 35, but there are always a few 60-year-olds, and it makes me happier than if everyone was 22.
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When I was younger, I wasn't concentrating on good days. I was managing a career and trying to have a good year. It would always 'lead' to something, which never leads to anything except death, where everything leads to. And then as I got older, and then I had my kids and everything, I began to appreciate a great Wednesday.