Paul Reiser Quotes (56 Quotes)


    But you get past that and realize you have to let go of what you think you want. There'll be plenty of time for that later. Right now, go and be with that baby. Just play with this beautiful little boy.

    I'm not smart enough to write about something that didn't actually happen to me, ... It's not a plan. But I couldn't write a space movie if you put a gun to my head.

    And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differently.

    In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That's not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It's a different point in both our lives.

    We made this movie for $17, and nobody got anything. So it never dawned on me that we would get real people.


    Some surprising moments come from the amount of physical comedy in the film, such as a bar fight Falk starts. Was it hard convincing the older actor to do this type of physical stuff The hard thing is stopping him every day from hitting somebody in the head, ... I think he was quite happy to hit me in the groin.

    The biggest thing I remember is that there was just no transition. You hit the ground diapering.

    What remains the same is the filter of time As you get older, ... you realize your parents don't look so dumb - and that you're not as smart as you thought you were.

    But the two of them together, broke my heart. Olympia and Peter, those scenes... When they're kissing in their 20s and then kissing in their 70s, that's what it is. And they had never met five minutes before they shot those scenes.

    Some critics also got the film, ... Luckily, everybody is unanimous about Peter. It's a monument for him. His work is so beautiful and subtle.

    And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on.

    It's not like some movies where you're following a bunch of different stories you can cut around. There was nowhere to cut to. It's these guys. We're not cutting back to anybody else.

    But I really felt that, something about the lights going down, and the sense of community. I saw this movie at one festival, and there were 1700 people.

    Guys need a little help in knowing how to care for a kid. It's not that I think Gee, parenting is beneath me. It's just that I wouldn't think of it.

    There was nothing you could come up with that would possibly be wrong.

    He said, 'Listen, you are a very good writer.'

    They're not the sharpest people - babies. So, you must be everything to them.

    Younger kids, they understand that things aren't so perfect with their father or with their mother,

    One time I met him backstage to see him after a performance of a play he was in, ... He grabbed me by the shoulders.

    I remember my wife and I used to get on plane and see everybody else with their babies. They'd be putting strollers and car seats up above, and we'd think: Oh, please Lord, don't make us go through that.

    Upstate New York in the middle of October. You can't get more beautiful than that.

    I'd never directed before and this movie's too important to me to put in the hands of some guy who has never directed. Even if it's me.

    Once I let the story brew, I was able to sit down and write it in a couple of weeks, ... I always envisioned Peter in the role, because there are few actors like him. I wrote pages and pages of stuff for Peter to do, knowing we wouldn't have time for it. I wrote these long scenes with Peter ordering food in restaurants and things like that, because I know what he can do with material once he has his way with it.

    The studios didn't know how they would sell it, ... It's not sexy, it has some older actors. But the strange thing is, I'm seeing people in their 20s and 30s walking out of the theaters laughing and talking about the film. And older people want to hug their kids after they see the movie.

    There's something that happens in that delivery room, when a woman becomes ten times more a woman, and a guy becomes six times less a man. You feel really dopey and useless and like a spectator. I did, anyway.

    People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family, ... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.


    Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it -- I just had to write it, ... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.

    I'd distract myself until finally it was a combination of things. The show was over and I had time on my hands. I had taken time and played and just relaxed.

    The day after I finished writing it, I literally called him the next morning and asked him if he'd please read this,

    She kind of reminds one of Helen. There's something very similar about Elizabeth Perkins.

    We have such a long, familiar history with Peter Falk. The minute his mug is on that screen people smile.

    Nothing would make me happier if Peter Falk would finally win his Oscar for this. Not just as the writer but as a fan and a friend. It would be so great.

    Any issues my parents went through are very prominent in the movie, even though they enjoyed a happy relationship, ... The story actually started for me when my mom told me a few years ago that because she got a job, she never made it to the World's Fair

    Field of Dreams is the only movie - and I saw it in the theater - on an afternoon when I was on location somewhere, and there were like 12 people in the theater. I was just so devastated; I couldn't get out of my seat. And I sat and watched it a second time.

    We're five years into the lean journey, and it is really starting to reveal big opportunities for us.

    But at the same time that the experience is pulling you apart, it's also bonding you. You have this joint venture! You both made this baby. And that's the thing I still can't get over.

    In fact, I had the idea because of Peter Falk. I saw my dad watching a Peter Falk movie and something clicked in my head. I gotta go make a movie for Peter Falk and me.

    I got the idea 20 years ago, but have to clarify to people that I wasn't writing that slowly,

    This is not the most right I've ever been.

    Every time I see Peter Falk in the movie I think that would be great. We'd be fun together.

    If the powers that be see there is a bigger market out there, it will make it easier for the next time around.

    I was visiting my parents, and I walked into a room where my father was watching a Peter Falk movie on TV, ... I think it was 'The Cheap Detective.' Anyway, my father was belly-laughing, and he never really did that. I thought, 'If Peter Falk can make my

    It felt like such a right idea that it didn't bother me to put it away, because I knew it would be ready when it's ready, ... When I had kids, I realized I understood my parents better. I had more compassion for them and I look at my kids and realize, 'Oh, man. This is just the same cycle all over again.'

    He is an undervalued treasure of American cinema, ... What I'm finding as we're traveling around is that everybody loves this guy. He's been so good for so long. I see it in people's faces. Women want to hug him and guys want to give him a pat on the back. I think that's one of the reasons the movie starts off so well. As soon as you see his mug on the screen, people are at ease. They go, 'I know this guy. This is comfortable.'

    Not only do I sing to him, I sing entire conversations. You become Jerry Lewis.

    Bob, the guy who did 'Big Fat Greek Wedding,' immediately saw what everybody else chose to not see. This is not a little art film. Bob said, 'This is a big commercial hit.' He realized there's something about the movie that really works. It can play everywhere. It's odd when you see the things that are most personal can end up becoming the most universal.

    He was born early. But he was born within a safe range of premature.

    We had the boy's name picked out, but we didn't have a girl's. When he turned out to be a boy, we were so relieved. Literally, in the middle of contracting and pushing, and with my wife being drugged - out and half - lucid, we were still coming up with names.

    I'm feeling very vindicated that, when I see the audiences laughing and being moved, we were right. This movie was worth making,


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