Armando Iannucci Quotes

Many of the comedies I had made in Sweden were slightly based on semi-autobiographical experiences, so adapting novels was a very different experience.

I think every movie is its own little world, and a director certainly sets the tone.

With 'Toy Story,' which is a fantastic film but is essentially animation, you get to make all your decisions beforehand. 'Jumanji' is shot much like any other action film.

So with 'There Will Be Blood,' I didn't even really feel like I was adapting a book. I was just desperate to find stuff to write.

Romantic comedies are particularly hard to make.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

Comedies are just never that expensive quite frankly. They really aren't. We aren't doing green screen shooting, so even Hangover II in Bangkok might seem like it's expensive, you're flying over and back, but they're just not that expensive to make when you do it the way we do it which is very focused and I've done it before.

All of the films I'm doing are young, urban, high-concept, funny films. That's the zone where I'd like to play and have fun in.

I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

You usually find me writing what I like to think of as intelligent summer action and genre films.

Action comedy, if you can get it right, it is, for me, a particularly brilliant genre. It really is.

I like to leave a film open-ended, with a lingering feeling. I'll not do sequels of any of my films till I have subjects to explore.

Clearly romantic comedy is my franchise genre, I don't mind saying that, it's true. I love doing them and hopefully always will do them.

The whole idea of genre and categorising films is a critic's construct. For me, I just try and make stories and see where they go, but there's nothing wrong with horror; there's nothing wrong with romantic comedies.

I'd never made a teen comedy in my life.

The budgets are much higher now, it costs more to make a movie and the kids that go to see them are into instant gratification. They want things bigger and bigger. I don't make those kind of movies. I make movies about relationships.

I think that a movie of a TV show is really tricky, and I don't know if it's ever really been done well. Because it's really hard if you have a 22-minute show, especially something like 'Party Down,' where it's all contained at the party.

The key to doing 'Harold and Kumar' movies is you make it earnest. Primarily what we do is make Harold and Kumar's relationship and friendship believable, and we don't actually work on being that funny.

It's not about choosing a specific genre; that's not how I go about deciding what movies to make.

I'm not a one-liner guy. I'm a story guy.

I think I'm a very sentimental person. Conscious or not, that's what draws me to the kind of films I want to make.

The last thing on earth I wanted to do was make a movie that plays directly to a sort-of frat boy audience, you know?

The cool thing about 'Transparent' is that the show is funny but not like a sitcom is funny. It all comes down to the writing... The writers on that show are so good that you don't have to worry about anything. There are so many things that can go wrong making a TV show or a movie, but if the writing's good, that's, like, 95 percent of it.

Being able to make a comedy at Disney was really appealing.