30 Quotes by Bob Balaban

I loved being in Close Encounters, just to watch Steven Spielberg working was exciting.

I produced and directed a movie a couple years ago that won some awards that Samuel Goldwyn released called 'The Last Good Time'. I wrote, produced and directed it, but I wasn't in it.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

Oh, I was completely hooked on movies and plays and theater from the time I was a day old - I was very, very early on in love with movies and I loved plays.

Holocaust is very much a part of present discussion all over the place. There are little plaques everywhere you go around in different neighborhoods. "This person here was prosecuted." "This person was sent to this concentration camp." "A family of Jews lived here. They took over his business." Little, very discrete, very dignified plaques are everywhere.

I’m from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

I mean, the whole idea of movies was it was special to go to see – you went to a movie theater to see something that was magical and amazing, in a very special location.

I’ve directed a fair amount of television series – so I’m always trying to learn new things. One episode was all hand-held and I’m trying to get better at when you should do things and when you should just shut up and watch what the people are saying.

God, I’d love to do a big commercial movie that made a lot of money and whose plot was interesting too.