Mockumentary Quotes

I stand by 'I'm not going to do 'The Office' again.' That would be weird: all the same people sitting at the same desks at a paper merchant's in Slough.

There are people who think the film 'This Is Spinal Tap' is simply a very funny 'mockumentary.' Well, with Yes, we lived it. Take the hilarious scene in the film in which the bass player is trapped in a giant pod - that actually happened to Alan one night.

I first met the 'Trailer Park Boys' when they did my web television show, and since then, I've hung out with them a few times.

Everyone says comedy is really hard, but with 'The Office' the naturalism was everything so it didn't feel like doing comedy; it just felt like doing a really offensive character who thought he was funny.

Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.

I thought 'Borat' was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn't some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

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

My first web series, 'Dorm Diaries,' was a realistic mockumentary about what it was like to be black at Stanford University. I'm black and I went to Stanford. Boom. Easy.

'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.

That was Embassy Pictures, they went bankrupt shortly after This is Spinal Tap came out.

'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.

I love Dead Ringers. A democratic set, the work was taken seriously.

I'm not a big comedy show-watcher, but I love Ricky Gervais' stuff and Sacha Baron Cohen's things. But I'm not an expert on them. I've seen them once.

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.

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

I'm a big fan of 'The Office', both the British and the American versions.

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

'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.

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

I thought The Office was good, though I didn't think of it as a sitcom, just as a very good programme.

When you start out as a filmmaker, you do parodies, because you can't really compete on a studio level.

I've just watched the whole series of 'Flight of the Conchords'. I absolutely love it - the humour, the actors, everything about it.

I'll always watch anything that Steve Coogan does in the character of Alan Partridge.

I've got to follow in the footsteps of Sacha Baron Cohen and do a prank show, or a film with real elements to it.

The Office' was nothing like anything I had ever done before - the style, everything. And Finchy is so over the top, I really did think it would ruin my career.