Judd Apatow Quotes

All I really want to do is things I haven't done. 'I'm gonna put a paper bag on my head and be on the cover of 'Billboard,' see what I can get away with - if they'll let me.' And they let me. And I am literally giggling inside for, like, a month that I got away with it.

You've got to know the rules to break them.

I try to please people, to give them a good time, but I refuse to make my act conform to traditional show-biz standards of entertainment. There's a little voice that says, 'Oh, no, you can't do that, that's breaking all the rules.' That's the voice of show business. Then this other little voice says, 'Try it.' And most of the time, when the voice comes on and says, 'No,' that's the time it works.

I think I'm always trying to subvert conventions, and sometimes it's more successful than others.

I like people who push the envelope.

I guess I much prefer the path of the contrarian: the guy who goes against the grain a bit. The careers of the people who I admire deeply - like the Coen brothers and Soderbergh - don't repeat themselves, and they make radically different films at times, and I think that's wonderful.

Originality is dangerous.

We've never tried to fit any mould because we already broke the one we started.

It's something I have always tried to do in my career - play outside the box.

What people don't realize is that when you start making things outside of the convention of what is normal or good or 'best practices,' you're also shedding some of the baggage that comes with the concept of what a game 'should' be.

When you think 'Peaky Blinders,' when it first began it got mixed reviews and people didn't know what to do with it, and it was like: 'Why is there modern music on this?' So I think whenever you do something different you're going to get that response.

Defying genre conventions is instantly a risky move.

Any time people are breaking outside the norm and playing something that isn't expected - that feels like punk to me.

At the end of the day we need to experiment and if we start being too cautious, we'll end up working with the same actors and doing the same roles. That's how people get stereotyped.

I like more the fact that I like to think out of the box. Thinking out of the box goes along with dressing out of the box and living out of the box.

I love strange choices. I'm always interested in people who depart from what is expected of them and go into new territory.

One of my biggest heroes and people I was fortunate enough to be around is David Bowie. I look at his career, and he always had the balls to break things that weren't broken, to step away from something and try something new, at risk of failing.

I want to go out there and do some different things that people are like, "Wow. That's crazy. Why didn't I think of that?"

The weird set an example for the rest of us. They raise the bar. They show us through their actions that in fact we're wired to do the new, not to comply with someone a thousand miles away.

Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.

We're in a very competitive industry, and sometimes the bigger Hollywood things are not so risk takey. I find myself mostly existing in this weirdo indie world, which I feel really comfortable being in. The thing that motivates me the most is to try to do something way different than the last thing that I did.

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best.

The only interesting ideas are heresies

You have to be original. The people creating a buzz on YouTube are taking risks, and they're doing something different. I like it when 15 year-olds come on and tell me what to do rather than the other way around.

I feel like so much of what I'm doing is making a road where there is no road and inviting people on that road with me. It's scary. It's scary, but I can't listen to the voices that are saying form is the only way, or that there is only this kind of form or that kind of form.