I'm just getting my sea legs. The first time you make them laugh, you're like, 'Oh my God - that just happened.' Then you're like, 'I made them laugh. I've earned this.'
I know as a director I hit it out of the park sometimes, and sometimes we haven't, and that's kind of the way art goes. You just have to be willing to take the 'failures' and learn from them, make the best of them.
There are things which are without answers, and there is nobody who can explain them. Either we feel them and sense them, or not. Sometimes we just give up and carry on.
Everybody has the answers or they'll make them up for you. Just once I'd like to hear a brand-new question.
Sometimes you'll see interviews about an actor who was asked to hit the weight room to develop his body for the character, and you hear them complaining about the egg white omelettes they had to eat and the tortures of hitting the gym twice a day - I find that to be a bit saddening, it's all a part of becoming the character and as an actor, that is your job.
The inspiration was this great group of 40 or 50 relatives, sometimes for Thanksgiving or Passover or something and my brothers would just go up and make them laugh.
It's hard being a woman in this industry, period. A lot of the time, guys make you feel like you need to hook up with them - especially as an artist - producers and other artists trying to collaborate with them, they make you kinda feel sometimes you need to hook up with them or flirt with them just to make a song.
Acting, it's hit or miss. Make them laugh, make them cry; hopefully they have a little entertainment.
I was extremely lucky to get this project [Brief Interviews with Hideous Men]. It was one of those things that I worked on in college. A friend of mine asked me to do a stage reading of that book and I was just completely blown away because, at that point, I was like, 'Acting's having fun with your friends and making people laugh.'
No, my young apprentice. You said the exact right thing. Again. I'm just laughing at life." "Why?" he asked, opening both his eyes. "Because sometimes it's either laugh or cry. I prefer laugh. How about you?
I like to make myself laugh. When I'm just sitting with a sketchbook and trying to make myself laugh or trying to come up with ideas, I try not to worry about aim right away. I'm just sort of shooting in all directions.
The moment in which you make somebody laugh, you're only doing it to make them laugh and be happy. Then afterward you can be like, 'Oh, I just want the attention. I feel so good that everybody's listening to me and I got the approval that I need.'
I also think there's too many players who say the same boring answers, they don't even have to turn up to interviews because journalists answer their own questions the way they ask them. Unfortunately the way it is now players are so afraid to say anything, but I'd like them to be honest.
I feel like there's such a responsibility, when you make a film, to enlighten people, to make them think, to make them laugh, or even just to be entertaining.
The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.
I found out that if you made people laugh, they like you. Most people got to like me because I made them laugh. When they didn't, I hit them.