Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by Jay Chandrasekhar - Page 2

The smartest thing a filmmaker can do is to become a good editor.

Violence is totally accepted in this country.

A lot of the original people on 'SNL' came through Chicago - and Toronto, I'm sure - but Chicago was the center of it all. When I was there, Chris Farley - I knew him; we hung out and stuff - he went off to 'Saturday Night Live,' it was like, 'It's possible to be from here and make it.'

Our fans often tell us that they see themselves in us. The relationship between the guys in Broken Lizard rings a bell with them, because they have their own little friend groups, with their own complex dynamics, and their own private jokes.

Many films you see in theaters are financed through outside sources. With big films, the studio will pay, hoping to reap the reward of their big bet. But with medium and small-sized films, outside production companies and financiers often foot the bill.

I'm from Chicago. And I was an actor in high school and college, and I wanted to see if I could make a run of it in this job. So, I went downtown in Chicago, and I went up on a stand-up stage and did an open mic. It went well, so I'm like, 'Alright, I'll give it another try.'

It takes a year for us to generate a script that is ready to shoot. There are maybe 20 drafts of a script. And, each time, someone saying 'I don't really love this,' we discuss it for 15 minutes.

The funny thing about any cop uniform is that people will do what you say when you're wearing a cop uniform.

'Smokey and the Bandit' is tough and funny.

You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business.

As funny as we thought our script might have been, 'Super Troopers,' starring five nobodies, didn't fit the model of a good financial bet.

Every time you jump to another format in the 'picture business,' meaning film, television, commercials, the people in the other format go, 'Ah, yeah, you made a lot of features, but you don't know how to do TV' or the commercial people go, 'Oh, you can't do 30 seconds.'

Integrity matters. What our fans think matters.

'48 Hrs.' is very tough and funny.

'Spinal Tap' is interesting because it created a genre of film and ended it - all in one motion. If you do a mockumentary, you are always going to be compared with that film, and you are never going to be as funny.

Filmmaking, at the end of the day, is really - in addition to the story and all of the equipment and the actors, it's really about time management. And so the smartest filmmakers are the ones who sort of pre-visualize the film in their head and are literally shooting the shots they need to cut the story together.

The reality about shooting films is that you can shoot many jokes and decide later which one works. So it's not worth fighting about jokes.

I think there's a pedigree that comes with being from Chicago that gives you some cache outside of L.A. and New York, where, frankly, most of show business really is.

A lot of comedies in the 1980s and 1990s had all these colors and were so brightly lit. But John Landis had this dark style, like a Scorsese film.

Like hitting a baseball, comedy is very much about timing. To some degree, you either 'got it or you don't.'

If you're not doing something or saying something in comedy, the camera is going to go somewhere else.

Look at the opening sequence of 'The Blues Brothers,' which starts at the prison. The way it was filmed, it does not look like a comedy. I thought that was great.

My father and mother were both doctors, yes.

I did a lot of standup from ages 19 to 24 but then stopped to focus on sketch with Broken Lizard.

When I started, there were no Indians on television or films, except for Sir Ben Kingsley. I was an actor in high school, college, and I played leads. And when I graduated, I knew that I couldn't go to Hollywood and audition for shows or films. I could try, but where was the evidence that it was going to happen?

Growing up, I was the only Indian kid around for miles, so I ached to belong. I had a neighborhood pack of nine guys and two girls, and we hung out all the time. We played football, baseball, and broom-hockey on the iced-up lake.

This career is a relentless hustle because Hollywood is crowded with too many smart, talented people pursuing the same dream and the same pool of entertainment investment dollars. And unlike in law or medicine, there are no college degrees required - no barriers to entry.

The reality of show business - and I suppose a lot of businesses, but specifically show business - is that it is this business of 'no's.' It's mostly 'no's.'

All I can do is keep my nose down and shoot the scene, shoot the scene, make it funny, make it funny, make it funny.

Making films requires the creative skills you'd expect, but it also demands immense non-creative skills, like the ability to raise all that money and the savviness to work the studio's politics.

A lot of filmmaking is just sort of slowed down by lawyers who feel they're more important than the filmmakers.

The thing about our movies is, we write thirty drafts. That's a very detailed script. Which means that if you try to crank it out week to week in television, it's impossible.

I started standup at age nineteen. I decided that the only way I was going to try show business as a career was if I could make total strangers laugh.

The first thing I do in the editing room is the 'radio edit,' where you listen to the dialogue and don't even look at the visuals. The rhythm, the music of the comedy, has to work.

If a joke makes our tribe laugh, we assume it will make other friend-tribes laugh.

We only ever write jokes that amuse us.

Whether I'm performing or directing, I'm aways thinking about rhythm; sometimes it's nailing the right rhythm, and sometimes it's intentionally breaking the rhythm. Those two things are what make something funny or not. How long a shot is and where you put the camera are all part of that rhythm of directing.

If you want to provide for your family, maybe show business is not a high degree of success. You will need to keep your day job until you make it, and know it's an odds thing just like the NFL. I personally wouldn't recommend anybody to go into this business.

Making an independent film is so great because you're your boss. And you have to be disciplined. You know? Because there's nobody telling you anything. But you have to kinda, you know, if you have an instinct to do something, you do it. There's nobody to run it by.

We hoped to get a TV show, and we almost did, but 'The State' beat us out for this MTV show. So because they were there, and 'SNL' and 'Kids in the Hall' were there, we thought, 'Let's go try to do what Python did, and instead, let's make movies.'

Everybody wants to make more movies. You see any movie, and it's just a feat of human strength and perseverance. It is a brutally challenging business.

Jessica's Daisy Dukes are even shorter than Catherine Bach's, which I honestly didn't think was possible.