Quotes by Adam Mckay - Page 4

Friends give me a hard time about the pants I'm wearing, which are made in China. Well, how do you find the right clothes? Or the right movie studio? The right people giving you checks? Good luck doing the right thing all the time.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Checks
Doing The Right Thing
Give Me
Good Luck
Luck
Pants
Time Good Me
Hard Time
Right People
The Right Thing
Copy Quote
I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
American Culture
Assault
Dumb
Silly
Sophisticated
Subversive
Copy Quote
If you look at 'Avatar,' could you imagine if you did 'Avatar' for 50 million dollars? It would be ridiculous! You would almost be getting laughs from the audience, unless you got a real indie director to do something incredibly stylised.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Dollars
Million Dollars
Avatar
Indie
Laughs
Copy Quote
Voting for Romney after the train wreck of that was the eight years of W. Bush is like losing your pay check playing a rigged game of three-card monte and then playing the same game again a week later 'cause the cards are a different color.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Cards
Color
Eight
Losing
Rigged
Romney
Voting
Bush
Check
Different Color
Later
Monte
Wreck
Copy Quote
It so happens that America, according to all the polls that are out there, is pretty progressive. So you're not going to see messages that support Ayn Randian individualism at the cost of the whole, because most people don't agree with that.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
America
People
Support
Copy Quote
Everyone is sort of in their own little area counting lines and no one talks when film's not rolling. There's constantly actors coming to me back behind the monitor screaming at me, "Why did my line count drop?" It's a nasty tense environment.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Actors
Lines
Rolling
Copy Quote
If you go back and watch 'The French Connection,' it's been cannibalized so many times. There are certain movies like that, where you see the original and think, 'This isn't so great.' And the reason it isn't so great is because everyone has copied it.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Original
Connection
French
Copied
Copy Quote
The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Abortion
Arabia
Corporate
Deregulation
Gay Marriage
Saudi Arabia
Tax Cuts
Tax
Arrangement
Cuts
Fires
Trick
Push
Religious Right
Saudi
Uses
Votes
Copy Quote
You have a guy like Bernie Madoff literally steal $80 billion, you know, AIG steal hundreds of billions, Goldman Sachs. Crime has changed so much, and to really do a movie with, like, drug dealers or drug smugglers is kind of almost quaint at this point.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Billions
Crime
Goldman Sachs
Quaint
Smugglers
Billion
Dealers
Hundreds
Steal
Copy Quote
Obama is the new kid with the weird name who people just sense is a little classier than his surroundings. He moved from a private school where he was class president and is now at the giant public high school with the metal detectors and the smoking lounge.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Class
High School
Moved
Private School
Smoking
Surroundings
Weird
Obama
Weird People New
Detector
Giant
Lounge
Metal
Private
Copy Quote
First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Dating
Lifestyle
Relevant
Applicable
Foremost
Gotta
Realm
Tiring
Copy Quote
I was completely with the reality TV boom for a while. I really liked a lot of the reality TV, and the one that lost me was the ballroom dancing one they do, 'Dancing with the Stars.' That was the one where I watched it and I was perplexed. I thought it was really boring.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Ballroom
Dancing
Dancing With The Stars
Perplexed
Reality Tv
Boom
Watched
Copy Quote
I guess HBO did a giant 'War in the Pacific' mini-series that cost, like, a fortune, and there was a little moment where they literally had no money. And even though the show had become kind of a cult hit, there was an issue of whether they could actually afford to do it.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Cost
Cult
Hbo
Pacific
Afford
Giant
Copy Quote
George W. Bush was a silver spoon dolt with no record to speak of other than bankruptcy and selling tropical plants, and we let him sail into the White House, but Barack talks about religious fundamentalism and guns being prevalent in poor areas, and we roast him for weeks?
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Bankruptcy
Fundamentalism
House
Poor
Religious
Sail
Selling
Silver
Speak
Tropical
White
White House
Area
Bush
Weeks
Guns
George
George W
George W. Bush
Him
Record
Plants
Roast
Silver Spoon
Spoon
Talks
Copy Quote
We lost our minds in the '80s and '90s; we really as a society just felt that everyone could only care about themselves. There was no responsibility to discuss what's going on in your town, your state, your nation. And it was a blast, it was really fun, but it doesn't work.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Blast
Our Town
Discuss
Copy Quote
The stuff that's going on is just so over-the-top, with the banking crisis and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, and the outrage hasn't quite caught up with the people yet. But when it does, I think you're going to see really virulent anti-authoritarian kind of comedy coming out.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Banking
Caught
Crisis
Destroying
Mexico
Outrage
Over The Top
People See Comedy
Gulf
People Comedy See
Copy Quote
You know how in every heist movie they get past the security cameras that show the hallway leading to the diamonds by jamming the screens with a fake signal of everything looking safe and quiet? Usually a guard coughs so they don't notice the blip from switching to the bogus feed.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Cameras
Fake
Quiet
Safe
Screens
Security
Switching
Bogus
Feed
Diamonds
Guard
Hallway
Jamming
Leading
Notice
Signal
Copy Quote
I always say the classier cousin of 'Anchorman' is 'Mad Men,' because when you really look at it, why do people really love Don Draper in 'Mad Men?' He's just a terrible guy. But we know why he's terrible, and I think that's really key to why you can be sympathetic to a character.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Cousin
Mad
Mad Men
Sympathetic
Terrible
Copy Quote
Basically, we used to have a rule at 'Saturday Night Live' that you're not allowed to bring up 'The Simpsons' at the rewrite table, because 'The Simpsons' has done every joke there is. Every week there would be guys going, 'The Simpsons did that.' I go, 'C'mon.' And 'South Park,' too.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Saturday
Saturday Night
Saturday Night Live
Allowed
Guys
Park
Rewrite
Rule
Simpsons
South Park
Table
The Simpsons
Copy Quote
The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers. In general, people like that are going to be more progressive, more open minded, a little more altruistic.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Directors
Musician
People
Copy Quote
Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program, it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Activist
Arms
Billions
Formality
News
Polite
Right Wing
Selling
Taxes
Tv News
Every Time
Ge
Mention
Official
Profits
Stake
Wins
Copy Quote
We, Will Ferrell and I, were approached by Sequoia, which is a big financing firm up in Palo Alto; they do a lot of Internet stuff, and they came to us and said they had an idea for a comedy site, and Will and I were sorta like, 'Yeah, we don't know. It's the Internet, we've seen it come and go.'
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Financing
Site
Alto
Come And Go
Will Ferrell
Copy Quote
Benito Mussolini created the word 'fascism.' He defined it as 'the merging of the state and the corporation.' He also said a more accurate word would be 'corporatism.' This was the definition in Webster's up until 1987 when a corporation bought Webster's and changed it to exclude any mention of corporations.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Accurate
Changed
Corporations
Defined
Definitions
Fascism
Merging
Said
Would Be
More
Also
Any
Bought
He
State
Corporation
Created
Until
Exclude
Would
Word
Mention
Mussolini
Webster
Copy Quote
It's Will Ferrell, he does Will Ferrell movies. But if you really look at it, he tries to do something different with each one, whether it's an action cop movie like 'The Other Guys' or doing 'Talladega Nights' going into red state America or 'Casa de Mi Padre' or 'Stranger Than Fiction,' which is more of a drama.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Action
Cop
Drama
Red
Stranger
Nights
Each One
Tries
Will Ferrell
Copy Quote
I have no political ax to grind; I just find it absurd that huge billion-dollar corporations can take over elections. I just find it insane that, for instance, we give tax breaks to people like myself making millions of dollars, while there're no tax breaks for working people. That, to me, is not a political issue, that's a life issue.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Absurd
Corporations
Dollars
Grind
Insane
Instance
Millions
Tax Breaks
Tax
Ax
Breaks
Elections
Millions Of Dollars
Working People
Copy Quote
There's such an aggressively apolitical movement in the US that anything that smells of being political - even the term "political" is so ridiculous, when you think about it. The worst part of governing, the political side, is the grossest part, so that's what they call it. So anything that reeks of that immediately gets tuned out by 70 percent of the population.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Political
Ridiculous
Thinking
Copy Quote
I grew up with a single mom who was a waitress. We were on food stamps. My mom then got Pell Grants, put herself through college to get a degree to get a better job. Because we were broke, I then had to go to a state school. I went to Temple University, and had to get loans. So I grew up in a world where I saw the government helping individuals pull themselves up, and saw it work very successfully.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Jobs
Mom
School
Copy Quote
I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture. It's one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America. It's one thing to break stuff and damage people's possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that's dangerous comedy.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Doubt
Dumb
Silly
Copy Quote
When you screen it the first couple times, you're just trying to get the movie to work, trying to get the story to flow, trying to find out where your areas are where you have enough breath to laugh a little bit. So you're doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it's working, and at that point, it's 50/50 as far as what's funny and what's working. Sometimes you'll put something in and it will just die so hard that it'll almost kill the movie.
Adam Mckay / Screenwriter
Couple
Laughing
Trying
Copy Quote

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Adam Mckay Quotes - Page 4

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