218 Quotes by Adam McKay

I don't want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of 'Idiocracy' and 'Borat,' without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture. It's one thing to mess stuff up and break stuff, but [Borat] is really pointing out the ideology of America. It's one thing to break stuff and damage people's possessions, but when you start aiming at the ideology of America, that's dangerous comedy.

Most of what's tricky about comedy is the perception of it and the audience's expectation.

There's such an aggressively apolitical movement in the US that anything that smells of being political - even the term "political" is so ridiculous, when you think about it. The worst part of governing, the political side, is the grossest part, so that's what they call it. So anything that reeks of that immediately gets tuned out by 70 percent of the population.

We punch mirrors and we explore our darker selves. No, it's just an amalgam of all newscasters that we grew up with. Sort of like before there was cable, when these people were like gods.

There's a lot of things you can't control. But you can always be a pro.

I think what's dangerous [about comedy] is that you're coming into the room announcing your intentions.

When you screen it the first couple times, you're just trying to get the movie to work, trying to get the story to flow, trying to find out where your areas are where you have enough breath to laugh a little bit. So you're doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it's working, and at that point, it's 50/50 as far as what's funny and what's working. Sometimes you'll put something in and it will just die so hard that it'll almost kill the movie.

I’ve gotten like five laughs in movies, just off guy hugs.

I could see how people get addicted to animation, and I understand why it’s so great for comedy. You can do whatever you want and it just happens.