Adam Wingard Quotes

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.

Only really good comedies and really good horror movies get a verbal response out of the audience. People will scream. People will laugh.

Stand-up keeps you on your toes because it's instant. With TV and movies, you have to wait for the numbers to come in to see what happened at the box office. With stand-up, it's right there, that night, in your face.

If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.

That's also why comedy and horror are my two favorite genres of film to write, because you get these outbursts of emotion from people, laughter and shock, and it's really thrilling, and I like to be thrilled.

If it's scary, it's supposed to be scary. If it's funny, it's supposed to be funny. That's all I try to do.

The essence of comedy, drama, and horror is surprise. I have an uncanny ability to surprise people because they look at my face, and they don't know where I'm going.

Comedy is like horror - you have to shock something in the viewer's system to make them feel it.

A great horror film works as a communal experience more than almost anything else, except for maybe a comedy. That's something that I've experienced, just taking this movie around and watching it with audiences.

When I bring my music to a live audience, I know right away whether it is being appreciated or not.

I think more than comedy, probably more than straight drama, I like horror. And horror I think I'm particularly good at. It's a mistake a lot of directors make, especially young directors. They always want to make the kind of movies that they most admire and aren't necessarily sensitive to what they have the best skill set for.

I came to the conclusion that in comedy, everybody gets what they need, whereas in horror, everybody gets what they deserve. I decided that at the end of the day, I was going to give everybody what they needed.

Horror allows you to do things as a composer than you're able to do in no other style of movie. The music has to be aggressive. You can't tiptoe around. It has to be incredibly focused dramatically - no time for second thoughts. It needs to generate a kneejerk reaction.

Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.

I've come to realize that you're going to get criticized no matter what. Somebody will always hate what you write, especially if you write humor for a fairly broad audience. Somebody will always find it not funny and declare you're not funny anymore. And sometimes people are just crazy.

I had invited 50 or 60 peers and friends, most of whom were parents, to see the film [Trust], and I asked about the last scene. It was interesting because it was split right down the middle, 50/50. About half the audience wanted it to end with the very emotional scene between Clive and Liana, and that feeling of realization and catharsis. And, the other half were adamant about keeping that last scene.

My writing process is very feedback-based. When I do stand-up, I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting, and then rewrite, rewrite and rewrite.

I enjoy the oohs! and aahs! from the gallery when I hit my drives. But I'm getting pretty tired of the awws! and uhhs! when I miss the putt.

I wasn't able to articulate it until after audience members gave feedback. And then, similarly, when we talked about the bromance being unique, I don't think Mark, Jay, and I really saw how special that aspect of that bromance was until our audience members sort of gave us feedback and let us know, "Hey, we've never seen a bromance like this before on television."

When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.

I've never watched my films with an everyday audience so it was really crazy to watch people clap at the end of my film - with no one there, no actors, no people from the film. It was just a spontaneous reaction, so I thought that was probably the best compliment you could get from an audience.

I think that laughter is very close to terror and horror. Maybe that's just me, but that sort of all - over rush that happens when you are either laughing or terrified or weeping...? I think that comedians, in and of themselves, make other people laugh because they aren't necessarily the happiest people in the world. So they know a lot about dark things.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

It’s one of the most enjoyable experiences. To me, it’s theater. Immediate reaction, the second it’s done. I get to be in my living room with you, trolling my own show.

You have to take the horror seriously but there's gags aplenty. Most people, when they do horror it's just grim.