Nicholas Stoller Quotes

When I just write something, it's usually because I love it, I love the material, but I feel like I really need a creative partner to crack it. And I certainly need and have a lot of creative partners as a director.

It's all in L.A. There might be some location shooting as well. I think it's pretty short. I heard it was like six to eight weeks, which is pretty short. But you don't have to do makeup or anything. There's no hair, there's no makeup, there's like one trailer for Jason and one for the actors who do cameos. It's quick. So that's what they're saying. I don't know if that will change.

I'm pretty brutal about getting rid of stuff. There wasn't anything where I was like, "Oh, I miss that," because usually it's for a good reason.

And then afterwards I worked in advertising for a year which taught me about writing even when you don't want to (laughter) because there's never a moment that you want to write about an Erickson cell phone but you have to. And that's really important you know obviously for the ... like if you really want to write, you have to write every day no matter how you feel or you know. And then, yeah, and then I ended up working in TV and then from TV into movies and then directing, so.

Sometimes a scene can elude you, and then, you also learn that the small moments are really what you're after. A big broad moment that gets the crew laughing, usually isn't going to translate to an audience.

Every video you see in the movie we have an entire video of it that will be on the DVD, so the whole video for African Child, the whole video for Super Tight, you know the Jackie Q songs.

And I watch all the dailies and I grade the jokes or the moments, you know, on a scale from ... so I know exactly what we have. And so I can then go into the editing room and be like "I want you to do this moment, this moment, this joke, that joke. I'd like to see 3 versions."

I remember like that scene with Pharrell where they're at the music video shoot, we have this on camera actually, Pharrell's confused because we weren't doing the script. We were doing all this improv and then Diddy says to him ... Pharrell's like I don't understand what's going on and Diddy goes, "We do a lot of improv". (laughter) I remember being we just made him into a comedy nerd. We somehow turned Sean Combs into a comedy nerd, so.

The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.

I mean we certainly always shoot a lot of extra material, but our goal was to make kind of like a big kind of rock-and-roll road trip comedy that has heart and that has hopefully you feel bad for Russell and you feel bad for Aldeus and also I wanted to surprise people with some of the turns in the movie and I think when I watched it with audiences they certainly ... the reactions made me think that we did and so all that I'm just very excited about it.

When I was writing the script I thought he is this guy. I really hoped ... I kept imagining him as that guy. And then he came in to audition and I was really nervous because I really wanted him to do Greek, you know? And he ... I didn't know who else I could cast. And he was amazing in the audition. Really funny.

It's interesting to have the awkward moments play out, and the real human interactions. The more you cut that down, you lose the joke, which is that this is painful and hard.

We have tons of live performances that we're putting on there. We have music videos. There's a music video for the song called I Am Jesus what is one of the funniest music videos, like we just could not find a place for it in the movie, but it's like crazy funny. And we have the whole video.

I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.

I think people try to jam a lot of artificial plot devices into a lot of romantic comedies, and they don't treat it with the respect I believe it deserves.

Everyone forgets that what's fun about a romantic comedy is how these two people are going to fight with each other and how's that going to be funny.

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.

A big part of being in a relationship or marriage or whatever is you have to eventually compromise. Your life doesn't end up exactly the way you think it's going to, and if it's the right relationship, you might have to compromise what you're doing professionally.

I think the best romantic comedies don't have villains.

And then my editor really likes that because he's left alone to do what ... to create those things instead of me breathing over his shoulder and I like it because I don't have to sit in the editing room all day. I get to watch just dailies.

I never liked the extended cut personally because I like ... we spend a lot of time figuring out our final cut. We test and test and test it, whatnot. Having said that, there's one sequence we're adding back into the movie for the extended cut that is pretty amazing that I think people are going to love.

And there's so much extra material. I mean, I've certainly read as you asked about do I read reviews and stuff, like people are like none of the jokes in the trailers are like in the movie. And it's like and we have whole sequences and scenes that weren't in the movie.

I love the romantic comedy genre. It's a genre rich with many of the best movies ever made and I try to treat it with the respect that Shakespeare treated it with.

The worst choice you can make, is no choice at all

Like everyone is either, "I grew up with it," or "I loved it," or loved them now. And when you watch The Muppet Movie now, it is so current. It's like The Simpsons before The Simpsons. It's not as cynical as The Simpsons would be but it's self-aware and there are a billion jokes, it breaks the fourth wall every five minutes, it's astounding, it's awesome. It's very exciting to be a part of that.

I mean I certainly like when I'm like talking to people I'm like what did you think, what did you think, what did you think? You know that's always in the back of my head.

I knew after 'Sarah Marshall' that my favorite genre is romantic comedy. Nothing is more satisfying than a great romantic comedy.

Yes, the fans are going to get their money's worth. It's like ... and everything on there is funny. It's not like random crap they put in a movie. I think it's all very funny, so.

I like digital because you can shoot for longer.