A Quote by Billy Crystal
I was introducing [director and producer] Hal Roach - Mr. Roach was 100 years old, he was one of the fathers of early days in films, he put Laurel with Hardy, he created the Our Gang kids, and all these silent movies he did - he was a giant.
Related Quotes
It is true that I got recognition. But however good the comedies are, nobody will accept a good comedy director as a good director. That is the sad part of it. Nobody knows who directed the 'Laurel and Hardy' movies. They know only Laurel and Hardy. Directors will never get a good name if they direct a comedy film.
Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.
A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies.
The same kids listening to Papa Roach will listen to an Xzibit CD.
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.
My father, Abe, was a small businessman. For 32 years, he ran an exterminating company. That may explain why our family always associated the smell of roach spray with love.
The producer can put something together, package it, oversee it, give input. I'm the kind of producer that likes to take a back seat and let the director run with it. If he needs me, I'm there for him. As a director, I like to have the producer there with me. As a producer, I don't want to be there because I happen to be a director first and foremost, I don't want to "that guy."
100 years ago, movies were black-and-white, silent, and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now, what are they going to be?
My father, who was a good deal older than my mother, had basically grown up with silent films; sound didn't arrive until he was 30 years old. So he took me to see silent pictures at MoMA when I was 5 or 6 years old.
I think you have to know these fellows definitely before you can draw them. When you start to caricature a person,you can't do it without knowing the person. Take Laurel and Hardy for example; everybody can see Laurel doing certain things because they know Laurel.
There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.'
You have to give people permission to laugh. That's why they would always cut to the banana peel in the Laurel and Hardy movies.
Nobody puts Roach in the corner.
In the early years, I found a voice that was my voice and also partly my father's voice. But isn't that what you always do? Why do kids at 5 years old go into the closet and put their daddy's shoes on? Hey, my kids do it.
I think a lot of African-American kids don't have fathers to teach them how to dress, so you end up being taught by pictures in magazine and movies. You see cowboys, Indians, old Hollywood films, Cary Grant. It has an effect on you.
Mary Roach's curiosity is notoriously infectious.
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