Nicholas Stoller Quotes

You don't have to always write about big stuff. Writing is about expressing yourself, you know? It can be about small stuff, too.

David Zucker was great! Those guys are funny. I mean, they are funny. There's a wonderful thing about doing that kind of work like Superhero Movie: You have to be real, but you also have to get the laugh. There you are, your director and the producers are right there at the monitors, and you either get the laugh or you don't. And so you just do it until you get the laugh.

Audiences can tell when you're being fake and they will eat you alive. But if you're doing something authentic they will connect to it and that can lead to commercial success.

These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.

I'll often use my real stuff in my writing because it comes across as more authentic.

Music is only special when it's coming from a genuine place - it's just energy trapped in a bottle.

As a filmmaker, you're looking to reveal something. When other people relate to it, it makes an otherwise lonely world a little less lonely.

I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect. That's important to me in any work I do. For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing.

I prize something that feels authentic. It's an undefinable thing, but I know it when I see it, and I think audiences do, too. One of the reasons why 'Bloody Sunday' and 'United 93' work is because they felt real, felt truthful.

Whatever your style or subject matter, in the end, film-making is about searching for authenticity - that is what the audience will divine.

You can hear my opinion on various subjects, but telling my story is the most authentic thing I can do. There's nothing more powerful I can share with an audience.

I get really excited when I see filmmakers make something that is subtle and feels real. It is really tough to do right.

Encountering a real place enhances the performances of actors in subtle ways and changes the spiritual texture of the film.

When you're filming, you're blind. But if you follow what really moves you, then you operate from a place of hope: maybe that the story you're telling will resonate with whatever the world will have become when the film is ready to be born.

It doesn't matter to me how I look on screen. What matters to me is how I connect with the audience.

I always used to say I'm definitely not a straight-ahead jazz singer, because then there's people who would hear what I do and say, 'Is it jazz? I don't know...' Whatever it is, it really comes down to creating music that makes people feel something.

If you make a movie that's close to your heart, it will be close to other people's.

To be able to be onstage and to hear people in the audience go, 'That's my song!' It's amazing.

I feel like in order for something to connect to an audience there needs to be a form of authenticity.

If I can't find a theme, I can't make a film anyone else will feel. I can't laugh at intellectual humor. I'm just corny enough to like to have a story hit me over the heart.

In acting class they tell you that you have to be real, connect with the people, connect with your partner. The same as politics, you have to connect to the people.

You start to find a rhythm and usually if it makes me laugh or comment in the editing room then I knew that's what's going to happen in the audience. That first reaction is usually the right reaction.

People like my films. They understand me through my films; it's like a connection that has been established between all my work and myself and the audience and the viewer.