Quotes

This is not my generation. I'm of the baby boom generation. We think we invented free love.

[film-making advice to his son Jason] Your job is not to make things funny. Your job is to tell the truth on a daily basis.

[on current comedy, 2013] The world has become more abrasive, possibly because of social media. But people said that about us. The sexuality seems to have lessened. There's more squeamishness about nudity and sex, but there's a lot more scatological interest today than there seemed to be thirty years ago. It's a weird shift.

[on the comedy of Melissa McCarthy] She's certainly extraordinarily talented. She has a way of using her physicality. And there's something about her nimbleness in moving a fairly hefty body around that is humorous, has been for generations.

[on John Belushi and National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)] What John brought was this wonderful energy based on the comedies he loved from the 50s - The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello - that physicality of the great American early comedians, against this very brash and contemporary way of speaking that the script had. It made it very special.. But when I worked with him before the movie and SNL, he was Brando onstage. He was the guy you couldn't take your eyes off. One of the great tragedies is that with his addictions he lost control of all his talent.