A Quote by Michael Ian Black

Any time I am involved in something from conception to execution, that's obviously a lot more personal, and I'm going to be more invested in it than something where I just show up for a couple days, shoot, and leave.
I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.
I've noticed that a lot of people do much better when all their resolutions are framed as 'Yes.' Not something like, "I'm going to give up French Fries," but something like "I'm going to eat three vegetables every day." "I'm going to hug more, kiss more, touch more." "I'm going to listen to more music." They do better when they frame things in the positive. And I think this is just part of human nature.
People don't want to pay for pitches. They want to see it. If you hear one more time, "Well, that's execution-dependent." Everything's execution-dependent! If there's something that's going to be a little bit more interesting than The Untitled Slinky Movie, then I think that writers that want to do interesting work and at the same time commercial work need to put it down on paper. So agents and producers that writers are working with are encouraging them to get it on paper because the studios like to see what they're buying rather than just imagine what it could be.
There used to be a period of time when you'd shoot big studio movies where you would shoot a couple of pages a day. For a TV show, you've gotta shoot seven to nine. The schedules are much more compressed.
When every guy on the team and the coaching staff is telling you, 'shoot it, shoot it,' obviously I've always known I could shoot it, but it was more of a trying to get the guys involved and being that middle man.
It's so much harder to recreate something than it is to shoot at the actual place. It's not without its problems. You've got a lot of bystanders and security issues, but it's always a lot easier and a lot more fun to shoot at the actual location.
I'm probably more personal when I'm acting than at any other time. More open, more direct. Because it allows me to be something that I can't always feel comfortable with when I'm living my own life, you know? Because it's make-believe.
In making a movie, you're part of a big machine. Even in a small movie there are still so many people involved in the process, and it costs so much money to make. There is so much more invested in it for a lot of different people, so much money is sunk into it that they usually want some guarantee or promise that it's going to be able to do something on a financial level. There's just a lot more messing with you in film. I love movies and I love to watch movies and being a part of the whole film experience.
Boys can be disgusting. You can't leave us alone for any length of time because we will burn something, blow something up or paint something. We're just obnoxious.
The faster we grew, the more stores we had open, the more money we made. Employees move quickly up the ranks of a company that's growing fast. Shareholders made a lot of money. If you invested $25,000 from January 1987 to January 1994, you'd have more than a million dollars. I get a lot of personal satisfaction from that.
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
I think a lot of times photo sessions is just a test, maybe, for models. Sometimes it's for money. I'm going to shoot a girl in a couple weeks in Italy who has been writing me for a couple years. She sends photos all the time and it's kind of like a game. A lot of times people write and then they just want to see if I'm interested. If I say I am, I never hear from them again.
I think that's pretty crucial for it to succeed and be something more than just something you put your kid in front of and turn on the DVD. We wouldn't have got involved if it were just for little kids. We wanted to write something that works on both levels.
There's something about majors where I just focus a lot more. Obviously, I need to do that more often.
The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to.
I can't work any harder. I can't do any more. I am literally just blown away and humbled by the volunteers and how hard they're working. I think they've got a sense that they're going to be part of something bigger than themselves.
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