James L. Brooks Quotes

Being on a successful television show is a good thing. It's steady work. It's a chance to work with a group of people in an intimate way... where you develop a sort of shorthand with each other, and a trust.

How do you make people do the best work? You make them feel comfortable, so you can feel comfortable - and then you can have a really good ballgame!

Television has been very good to me. I grew up on it, and it had quite an impact on me. I'm entertaining opportunities that are coming my way.

The collective energy of everyone is what really made Business 2.0 exciting.

I fondly remember good times working on 'Thor.'

I've always said that if you can get the best people who are good at what they do, but more importantly are passionate about what they do, you'll succeed.

The whole experience of working on this movie was so fun, and I had more fun working on that than I've had on anything else. I had more fun working than on my days off.

When I was doing the first 'American Pie' movie, I was just happy to have a job. We had a good time, and it was a great group of people, but like any project that I've worked on in my career, you just put your best foot forward, and you're all working together to make the best movie possible.

If the chemistry between me and the artist is good, then that's half the battle.

I just want to be in good things that I want to see, and I want to work with talented people who are smarter than myself.

Tarantino is the coolest damn guy; he's just so much fun to work with. He might be the best director I've ever worked with. He just seems to know how to do it and he knows how to make you feel good about it. He's having so much fun you start having fun. You can't help it.

I call 'Community' the best day job in the world, because between takes, I get to write music. I get to write sketches. I get to write movies. It's the best job ever.

No great television show has ever rested on just one person. They're all about great ensembles and storytelling.

You must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us.

When you share work, and you have the opportunity of seeing people you like doing what they do best, and you also interchange socially with them, it's very addictive.

As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.

After the 'X Factor,' there were opportunities everywhere. It was all there waiting for me to enjoy. I didn't understand business.

I've worked with many directors, good ones and bad ones. So if I have a chance to work the good ones, I better put myself in their hands, and trust them, because that's my big opportunity to be different, and to be better than usual.

My focus is to grow, have fun, and work with people who inspire me, like Philip Seymour Hoffman.

All of us involved say 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' was the best five years of our lives. We were like otters at play.

It never gets old. Working with somebody like Kevin Hart is rejuvenating in a lot of ways. He's such a pro. He's so good.

In my experience in series TV, if you have a good crew and a great cast, it's going to be a great group - similar to the theater where it's a bunch of people who are really talented and go to work each day and challenge each other, and if you are lucky enough to get a hit then it's five or six or seven years of this kind of work.

Whenever you do a film, it's always like a little miracle. So many people getting together trying to do something so that the audience can be entertained.

The thing about working on a Ryan Murphy TV show is that he has such an extraordinary collective of artists, so everyone is really like a family.

I'm not the best filmmaker, but on the sets, it seems like everybody is having fun.