A Quote by Joseph Stefano

It's not like the original movie where you thought it was the mother committing the murders, but it was actually the son. I don't think it's possible to create the kind of shock today that we created in 1959. And I don't even want to try.
I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.
I've tried the female thing. I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks a couple of years ago with Steve Carell and I created a female character for that movie. And after a few months of trying her out on the road it just didn't work. I mean, I can think like a terrorist, I can think like a white trash guy, I can even try and think like an African American, but I can't figure out how a woman.
You never want to have a movie be derivative, because that's the worst if you ask me. I always want to be in original material, or an original idea, or an original vision, rather than a rehash of some other movie.
Be as honest with yourself as possible, and try to make friends with people who like you for you - not an iteration of who you are, or who you think you should be - but really like you for you. And when you're creating whatever you want to do in your life, just try to create and put out the truest version of yourself into the world.
As a father, you find yourself telling this to your kids a lot. My son, when he didn't want to play baseball, I was like, "Buddy, try it. Try playing baseball and if you don't like it, that's fine. But I want you to try it. I want you to try as hard as you can at it. And then we'll talk about it." You kind of have to give yourself the same pep talk. As a 43-year-old, you're like, "You know what? Just, try it. Try as hard as you can, give it everything you got and then accept the results."
It was like a dream to me to suddenly get into the market with that kind of movie, like La Haine. It actually created my identity as an actor, that thing.
Instead of improvisers who want to be funny by themselves, we aim to try and make the scene itself as funny as possible. As a creator, I think that's someone you'd rather work with, whether it's a movie or a sitcom; that kind of methodology is good for collaboration. People want to be with those kinds of performers.
You've got a movie where the pro-choice family gives their daughter no choice. The pro-life family murders. What seems to be the good mother, the kind of hippie painter, sweet and cute mother has no love for her daughter really.
You hear these yummy mummies talk about being the best possible mother, and they put all their effort into their children. I also want to be the best possible mother, but I know that my job as a mother includes bringing my children up so, actually, they can live without me.
You don't do things for shock value anymore, because that's not even the language of today. At least, that's not what interests me. If I do it, it's because I want to see things in another way, not necessarily because I want to shock anybody.
The original idea [ of the Pineapple Express] came from Judd [Apatow] actually. He just kind of had the loose notion of like, 'What about a weed action movie?'.
Mothers see the angel in us because the angel is there. If it's shown to the mother, the son has got an angel to show, hasn't he? When a son cuts somebody's throat the mother only sees it's possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil - and she's entirely right about that!
For me, I try as much as possible to just think about being in the movie theatre, having the lights dim, and what would I want to see on the screen. That puts me in the frame of mind that made me want to be in the movie business to begin with.
It was actually the movie 'Rushmore' that made me first realize that I could try writing, but 'Cheers' is the best show ever. The writers on that show created a relationship that writers today still fail to rip off successfully: the Sam and Diane.
There's nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, "Wow, I want to do this." I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.
You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual's pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty.
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