My philosophy is making a movie is difficult enough and I just feel as if you should have a really good time when you do make films whether it's a drama or a comedy.
You just can't make any movie and it will be good now. This is a really a difficult time to be in films.
Comedy is more difficult than drama. I think it's really difficult to make someone laugh because people have very different comedic sensibilities. In drama, you can get away with being a great actor and surrounded by great actors and having good writing. But in comedy you have to listen and you have to perform with a certain rhythm, because if you don't, it's like playing a wrong note in the orchestra and you can hear the off key and it will fall flat and you won't get that instant response.
I love everything. I don't see myself doing a really serious drama in the next five to ten years. I don't feel mature enough for that yet. But I'd like to make a pure action movie one day or maybe I can do a comedy again. I do like everything. But I don't feel ready for a musical or something like that. That's not my thing yet.
I personally just want to do as many different things as I can do, whether it's comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, narrator... You've got a documentary, I've got a voice. Animated films. Big films, small films.
I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.
'Funny People' is my favorite performance of myself to date. Even though it's a comedy and there are serious moments, I really felt like Leo felt like a real person. It didn't feel like I was playing myself. Whether it's a comedy or drama, I just try to make it as realistic as possible.
And you know, whether it's drama or comedy, the best work is based on truth. It's just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that's where the humor comes from. So it's not that difficult to cross over.
Critics think we try to make bad films. They think we want to spend five months of our lives making something bad. We always go out with the best of intentions, whether it's fluffy comedy or a drama.
Comedy doesn't come easy for me. I've only done 2 movies that are really comedy-style films and I have to work at them. And they're just as scary in a way. I hate labeling all these things; comedy, love stories, dark drama, whatever.
I'm not prejudiced about what type of movies I'm in, what form they take or whether they're studio or independent. I just want to make films that are going to be good. The main reason is not to make money, although at some points it's really difficult when you're broke.
When you making a piece of comedy entertainment, the audience is a big component there. You do have to end up getting rid of things that you love, but in the interest of making a movie that's not longer than two hours, and in the interest of when every joke hopefully is good enough, then everybody looks good. You cut things that you love, but ultimately it's for the greater good of making the whole movie better.
When in a movie like 'Housefull' you have to create comedy out of falling on a glass table or jumping from huge heights, it's all action, but packaged as comedy. Here you don't just have to perform a heavy-duty action sequence, but you have to make it look funny and that is really difficult. But it's fun... and I really enjoy it.
I'm really interested in mythology and folklore. I'm interested in moralities, why we're here, faith... all of these bigger questions that I think we can place in films that allow us to question and give us a safe place to feel. Those types of questions can pop up in all sorts of different types of films - drama, comedy, action movie.
Whatever the reasons that I turn things down, I'm always happy when there's a good result, and I can enjoy it as a movie, you know? I don't feel like, 'Oh man, that was really good. I should have done it.' You have to make the decisions you have to make, whether it has to do with your family or repeating a character or whatever it is.
Having written both comedy and drama, comedy's harder because the fear of failure's so much stronger. When you write a scene and you see it cut together, and it doesn't make you laugh, it hurts in a way that failed drama doesn't. Failed drama, it's all, 'That's not that compelling,' but failed comedy just lays there.
I can't always be making 'British films.' Why should we be making films about corsets and horses and girls learning to drive when Americans send over an event movie and make five or 10 million?