Robert Towne Quotes

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.

The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that's not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.

Eighty per cent of my output is 'Mallory clowns on the Western canon,' and I'm happy to be that person.

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

The first time you watch a movie that you like, all of the magic works on you. It's an experience of having a world unfold in front of you. But if you watch it again, you start to see where the seams are.

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.

Tarantino's 'Django' amused me very much. It is as made by an adult that was still a child.

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

I've always been a huge fan of thrillers like David Fincher's 'Se7en.' I am fascinated by the disturbing, dark underbelly of life. I find such films deeply engrossing. They delve deep into the human psyche, and that's a place worth exploring.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'

It's a big part of what we do - we test our movies extensively. I'm always there myself. It's sometimes difficult to sit through, especially if it's a version of the movie that's not working particularly well.

I saw the original that Gela Babluani wrote and directed called '13 Tzameti,' and that was very interesting. I believe it was a French film, and I was just intrigued by the awkwardness; the off-beatness of the film really just grasped me.

Dobie was so well written and so ahead of its time.

Look at 'Batman' - that was theater of the absurd, as is 'Family Guy.'

There's a recent film, the Swedish movie 'Force Majeure.' I just thought it was brilliant.

I liked 'Repo Man.' Satire.

Most of my exposure to American pop culture was through this weird prism of 'Mad' magazine.

What about Hong Chau? In typical supporting-part fashion, she shows up halfway through 'Downsizing,' already shrunk, an imperious Vietnamese house cleaner with a limp and sharp angles. The movie's satirical cleverness upstages its rage; then Ms. Chau proves she's capable of managing both.

You could probably ask anyone who loves Fincher films, and they couldn't answer why.

Monty Python never directly said, 'We're liberals' - they just did their sketches, and you had to figure it out. Generally, they were anti-establishment, of course, making fun of the people in power. I think, comedians, that's their job - pointing out what other people might not notice and going, 'Yoo-hoo, over here.'

Drag is pastiche and parody and satire. Drag queens are never meant to be stars. We make fun of stars. Drag queens are the people that 'point' at the star.

I look to icons like George Carlin, Chris Rock, and Richard Pryor on how to present these concepts of social change and subversiveness to an audience in a way that's palatable.

I've seen 'Legend'. I like a different kind of cinema, but when done with conviction, anything looks good.