I was in Kashmir last weekend. Went to visit one of my sweaters.
Albert Brooks
I don’t think the goal is, ‘How big a star did you ever become?’ I think the goal is, ‘Were you able to express yourself?’
Albert Brooks
As an actor, if you’re just sitting and staring and you don’t know who you are in your own mind, it’s vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.
Albert Brooks
What’s interesting about books that take place in the future, even twenty years in the future, is that many of them are black or white: It’s either a utopia or it’s misery. The real truth is that there’s going to be both things in any future, just like there is now.
Albert Brooks
When I was younger, I wasn’t concentrating on good days. I was managing a career and trying to have a good year. It would always ‘lead’ to something, which never leads to anything except death, where everything leads to. And then as I got older, and then I had my kids and everything, I began to appreciate a great Wednesday.
Albert Brooks
It’s funny: in the middle of making ‘The Muse,’ I was offered, at the time, the first ‘Ice Age,’ the part that Ray Romano took: I was offered the elephant. And I couldn’t even stop to breathe, so I didn’t do it. They’ve made, like, six of them. And in the animation business, for a voice actor, that’s what you want. You want six, you know?
Albert Brooks
If you don’t succeed on your own ground, then there’s no reason to succeed. Unless, of course, you really want a boat. If you’re a person who feels that with a yacht, everything will be all right, then you should do whatever you have to and get the yacht.
Albert Brooks
I don’t see many explosions or ten-car crashes in the course of my life, so I don’t put them into my movies. I would love to live in a society where ‘My Dinner with Andre’ made $100,000,000. Then I would be in the mainstream. I could do that stuff easier than I could do ‘Meatballs.’
Albert Brooks
Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o’clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you’re acting in it. And I’m inherently lazy.
Albert Brooks
You know what I’ve always wanted to do? I’ve always wanted to put a lung in a suitcase and send it through an airport security check. In effect, the guard would be looking at an X-ray of a lung.
Albert Brooks
You know what I’ve always wanted to do? I’ve always wanted to put a lung in a suitcase and send it through an airport security check. In effect, the guard would be looking at an X-ray of a lung.
Albert Brooks
I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on ‘Keene at Noon.’
Albert Brooks
I probably learned, being in ‘Taxi Driver’ before I made my first film, I would come to the set every day just to watch how that film came about. It’s like a graduate course: it’s terrific. You talk to the cinematographer during the breaks. You ask the electrician why they are doing this.
Albert Brooks
When I die, if the word ‘thong’ appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I’ve screwed up.
Albert Brooks
I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you’re younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That’s what people do. And you can’t really fix anything. It shouldn’t be a massive difficult thing every day. Life’s difficult enough.
Albert Brooks
I’m not Elvis. I don’t get chased by paparazzi.
Albert Brooks
Most entertainment is trying to get you. It’s tested, like toothpaste.
Albert Brooks
If your last name is Christ, don’t name your son Jesus.
Albert Brooks
Twitter is the Devil’s playground.
Albert Brooks
I don’t know how, where, and why the idea for ‘Defending Your Life’ began; the idea had been bouncing around for a while. Stories like that sort of have to bounce. They don’t come out of nowhere. I went through my own period of life with sort of everything turning upside down, and wondering, ‘Why is it this way?’
Albert Brooks
Bullfights are hugely popular because you can sit comfortably with a hot dog and possibly watch a man die. It won’t be me, but I can sit comfortably and watch it.
Albert Brooks
I come from the place where I am thinking ‘I have put my blood on the pages.’
Albert Brooks
I’d still like to see ‘Survivor’ minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business – I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else’s foot.
Albert Brooks
If we had 3 million exhibitionists and only one voyeur, nobody could make any money.
Albert Brooks
I’m not interesting enough on my own that you’d want to see a film about me.
Albert Brooks
It’s better to be known by six people for something you’re proud of than by 60 million for something you’re not.
Albert Brooks
Even if you didn’t see the movie, you’d see two words you’d never seen put together before – comedy and Muslim. Comedy is friendly – it’s the least offensive word in our language.
Albert Brooks
When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn’t really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.
Albert Brooks
I’ve been to many funerals of funny people, and they’re some of the funniest days you’ll ever have, because the emotions run high.
Albert Brooks
I guess ‘The Player’ was a pretty good L.A. movie. And ‘Chinatown.’ Was there ever a better L.A. movie about a certain period in L.A.? That was terrific.
Albert Brooks
I never wanted to be a director.
Albert Brooks
You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn’t feel natural. The pressure is too great. You’re on a time schedule. You’ve got 60 crewmen.
Albert Brooks
Listen, there are some movies that are set in stone and the writer or the director does not want to change, but I’ve never worked on a movie, including my own, that didn’t take advantage of a rehearsal process.
Albert Brooks
If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they’re all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That’s what’s called American fiction these days.
Albert Brooks
It’s interesting when you’re part of a group – the Jews, to be exact – that the world has had such problems with.
Albert Brooks
Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.
Albert Brooks
I, sort of, got into comedy accidentally, and it got bigger than I wanted it to.
Albert Brooks
There’s always the standard six people you can hire that have played all these villains in Hollywood. Instinctively, when they come on screen, you know what’s going to happen. You don’t know the story, but you know what they do.
Albert Brooks
I’ve always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.
Albert Brooks
I can’t not put humor in a book.
Albert Brooks
I don’t want to be the one to break it to you, but the future ain’t that funny.
Albert Brooks
I’ve always liked to think ahead. Not stupid-far ahead. A hundred years doesn’t interest me. But 20 years interests me, and more for what happens to humans as opposed to things.
Albert Brooks
You never do a movie and not want it to work. You accept whatever it is. You have to, but nobody in their right mind would not want the movie to be getting talked about at the end of the year.
Albert Brooks
I’ve done performances in movies that I was immensely proud of and the movies didn’t take off like a rocket at Cape Canaveral, it didn’t take off.
Albert Brooks
I like movies about failing.
Albert Brooks
I take anything other than ‘you big pig!’ as a compliment.
Albert Brooks
If you’re going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn’t expect.
Albert Brooks
I’m a strong fellow.
Albert Brooks
Drive’ came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, ‘You’ve always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.’ My ears just perked up.
Albert Brooks
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that’s all people know how to do when they’re improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
Albert Brooks
If you paint, write, do mosaics, knit – if it’s solving that part of your brain saying, ‘I need to do this,’ you’ve won.
Albert Brooks
When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren’t actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.
Albert Brooks
How many people didn’t get a part who would have been better than the person who got the part? Thousands.
Albert Brooks