98 Quotes by Todd Phillips

I take it very seriously, music. I think it’s one of the tools that a director has with which to kind of paint. The right music can sometimes do five pages of scripted dialogue.

I love confidence in a guy. I don’t have it, but there’s nothing sexier.

I find I like to work with a lot of the same actors, because I find that there’s sort of shorthand there, and there is this unspoken trust, both ways. They trust me and I trust them. And I know what I’m going to get from them, to an extent. It’s just fun, kind of creating this little family.

Reality television hasn’t killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape.

I never had a ton of male friends and it’s always been something that’s really interesting to me, what brings guys together? The bonding. ‘Old School’ is a good example of that. And even ‘Starsky’ and even ‘Road Trip.’

Directors tend to be more underrated than overrated because it’s a quiet job and people don’t really understand it.

What it boils down to is that when you say the word Las Vegas it means something. You could say New York City and it doesn’t really mean anything. When you say a word like Bangkok, in my mind it means something. There’s not a lot of cities where the world literally brings a picture to your mind.

I think comedy directors tend to feel a need to justify the bad behavior, and I just never think that. I like bad behavior, I’ve always liked bad behavior, I’m a fan of bad behavior, and I don’t think you have to justify bad behavior.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn’t have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.