Barry Levinson Quotes

I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.

Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.

When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.

A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.

There's no downside to having too much experience.

Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation.

It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.

I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.

We're never going to be the ultimate-insider look. You can do 50 insider looks at this Hollywood business, and the satire didn't intrigue me. I think others can do that.

I thought a great line in the What Just Happened movie said, "We're just the mayonnaise."

I don't know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don't think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.

I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

Studios just sometimes make decisions on their own that you're always flabbergasted by. It just happens that way for whatever reason - not even pointing fingers, it just is.

I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.

I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.

I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.

I think it's a promising time which will show a lot of diversification that we've seen in the past.

I think test screening works at its best when the audience knows what it's getting.

They're intimidating the networks and levying these fines, so the networks are not sure of what they can or can't do.

You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.

I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.

I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.

No one really has the power, and everybody's trying to get through the day, and everybody's nervous and desperate.

I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.

I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey.