Bill Hader Quotes

'Spinal Tap' influenced me, I think, specifically in making me really pay attention to tone.

I would love to do a comedy spoof, like a Spinal Tap kind of thing.

I don't know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film 'Annie Hall,' but it is, in a way, to Los Angeles and 'Hollywood' what 'This Is Spinal Tap' is to many musicians.

Music documentaries are tricky because of 'Spinal Tap.' That movie has stood the test of time.

I've always loved improvised movies like Christopher Guest and the 'Spinal Tap' era of comedy.

'Spinal Tap' is interesting because it created a genre of film and ended it - all in one motion. If you do a mockumentary, you are always going to be compared with that film, and you are never going to be as funny.

I was in the pilot for Spinal Tap before it was a movie.

Chris Guest movies are funny.

I could not do the film Spinal Tap because I was already at MTV and it was occupying all my time.

I think we grew up thinking that the funniest things on TV were the old, serious movies. I always liked the Marx Brothers, but the thing that always made us laugh were movies like Zero Hour. That's what inspired us.

Christopher Guest movies are my top of the line favorites.

I can only write what makes me laugh, and what makes me laugh is the comedy I grew up on.

The movie Spinal Tap rocked my world. It's for rock what The Sound of Music was for hills. They really nailed how dumb rock can be.

Certainly early on, I kind of modeled myself after Steve Martin and Bill Murray. I would imitate them sometimes.

Albert Brooks is definitely one of my biggest influences, for sure.

I was pretty much a child of 'Monty Python.' I grew up loving that type of humor and even structured a lot of humor in the same fashion.

I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.

I'm really fond of 'Real Life' because I think it anticipated a whole movement. And people forget, they talk about 'Spinal Tap,' but that wasn't... this was a mockumentary a long time before that. It was one of the early, early sort of mockumentaries.

'Waiting For Guffman' was different right away from 'Spinal Tap,' because we didn't show the interviewer. That person became invisible immediately. That created a different way of tuning it and ultimately editing it.

'Spinal Tap' began as a mock rock band that we four - Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and myself - developed for an appearance on a TV pilot at the end of the 1970s. On our own initiative, we wrote and recorded most of the songs and performed them live in several music clubs around L.A. before any cameras rolled.

People like Bill Murray are incredible at what they do and are definitely my flavour. Although Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais are also incredible actors. In their comedy, they make these stupid people feel so real. These guys are really setting the bar very high, and I learn as much from them about acting as I do about comedy.

People still quote my lines from 'Best in Show.'

'This is Spinal Tap' was a film we felt really had to be done like that. It wouldn't have worked any other way. And it turned out to be the first time a fiction film had really been made in a documentary format. I continued to do that, obviously, because it's a fun way to work.

As a kid, I always loved Mel Brooks' stuff - 'The 2,000 Year Old Man' record was something my dad put me onto.

We just thought of 'Boosh' as an extension of our childhoods in a way, the stuff we had grown up on and loved: 'Monty Python,' The Goodies, Frank Zappa. It spoke to a certain type of person, and we just carried on doing it.