Top 100 Adam Mckay Quotes
#1. I hired a personal trainer to help me lose 25 pounds and get from obese to fat. My next step will be to get from fat to chubby.
Adam McKay
#2. With the derivatives market larger than ever, we need way more regulation of Wall Street, not less.
Adam McKay
#3. David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He's not only a great director, but he's also a great writer.
Adam McKay
#4. As for movies, what's great about comedy is that if your movie gets laughs and makes money, you have freedom.
Adam McKay
#5. I hired Tina Fey for 'SNL,' which was certainly a good match. She took off right away there.
Adam McKay
#6. Since FDR's New Deal, corporations and wealthy families have been non-stop finding new ways to get tax breaks, deregulation and entitlements from the government.
Adam McKay
#7. When the movie starts playing on TV and DVD, that's when you really see what the movie is.
Adam McKay
#8. I was a huge fan of comedy in high school.
Adam McKay
#9. Nowadays, the truth is, I think a lot of the newer generation of action stars usually are pretty self-deprecating and cool. I mean, Dwayne Johnson is a great example.
Adam McKay
#10. I think when a lot of actors hear improv, they think of throwing a line in or doing a slightly different take.
Adam McKay
#11. I'll tell you one thing ... no doubt about it, my favorite kind of comedy is talking head comedy. I mean, if it were up to me, I'd do a whole entire movie that was just around a dinner table.
Adam McKay
#12. I was born in Colorado and grew up in Pennsylvania with family in Texas and Oklahoma.
Adam McKay
#13. I do have to give it up for Sarah Palin on one account. She is brave.
Adam McKay
#14. Michael Lewis has the amazing ability to take complex formulas and concepts and turn them into page-turners.
Adam McKay
#15. Governor Palin leans far closer to 'spokesperson' than representative of the people.
Adam McKay
#16. I'm not against banking. Banking allowed our modern society to happen, it is essential. It connects the work through finance, so banking is good.
Adam McKay
#17. Hollywood has to appeal to the broadest audience, and when it comes to most social and economic issues, America is progressive. Because of that, the messages that are in Hollywood movies tend to be, for instance, pro-environment.
Adam McKay
#19. All we have is our vote. But it's powerful.
Adam McKay
#20. Everything in America is so stratified by class now. We have the 93rd level of income inequality in the world. You're already seeing highway lanes that are for pay and ones that aren't.
Adam McKay
#21. The thing is, I've gotten massages to Enya. I like Enya. If you ate fantastic steaks to Celine Dion, you'd like Celine Dion.
Adam McKay
#22. Sony is the coolest studio. They are really amazing. I think part of it comes from they're not an American corporation. They don't work by quite the same rules. And their studio heads have a lot of autonomy.
Adam McKay
#23. I don't think arrested-adolescent humor will fade. Maybe the form will change, but I guarantee its replacement will still be based in immature behavior from mature figures.
Adam McKay
#24. Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.
Adam McKay
#25. The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way, you can break the ice. It's crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.
Adam McKay
#26. Things I used to get in trouble for writing at 'SNL,' suddenly other people like it.
Adam McKay
#27. The truth is, there's an information blockade in America, and it must be broken. In order to find crucial facts, numbers and outside perspectives, a person must spend an hour searching and cross-searching on the computer.
Adam McKay
#28. As far as how much you listen to the audience, you listen to them when they really hate something.
Adam McKay
#29. I'm a huge hip hop fan going way back, like, back to '83. I had my Gemini mixer listening to Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow.
Adam McKay
#30. I gotta say - if I clicked on a movie interview, and the first part was all about Walt Whitman, I'd love that article.
Adam McKay
#31. Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis.
Adam McKay
#32. I would never do 'Stardust Memories' because I don't particularly like that kind of movie - that would be why I wouldn't do that.
Adam McKay
#33. You think of movies like 'Midnight Run' and '48 Hours', those are great movies, especially 'Midnight Run.'
Adam McKay
#34. I always say the classier cousin of 'Anchorman' is 'Mad Men,' because when you really look at it, why do people really love Don Draper in 'Mad Men?' He's just a terrible guy. But we know why he's terrible, and I think that's really key to why you can be sympathetic to a character.
Adam McKay
#35. Depending on what state you live in, you may only have right-wing talk radio and FOX or CBN with MSNBC three hundred channels down the dial.
Adam McKay
#36. I like to remind myself how hard acting is. I do parts in friends' stuff.
Adam McKay
#37. After thousands of hours of news coverage, we have learned that Hillary is a liar and Barack is a terrorist or something.
Adam McKay
#38. The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.
Adam McKay
#39. Can anything good come of a backward way of thinking like judging someone based on skin color? No way.
Adam McKay
#40. McCain is the kid who was really cool in middle school but never got high school game and people are sick of him acting like he's still popular.
Adam McKay
#41. There's nothing the people love more than a Federal Reserve joke.
Adam McKay
#42. In the past, in the '60s and '70s, genres were much more segmented. You had action guys who were deadly serious about it, and I think you had comics that were comics.
Adam McKay
#43. There's nothing more fun than making fun of what's sacred.
Adam McKay
#44. Dave Herman as Michael Bolton is one of my favorite performances ever.
Adam McKay
#45. Nothing heightens chaos more than a berserk wild animal right in the middle.
Adam McKay
#48. 'Firewall' seems both scary and protective at the same time. And how often does that happen within one word besides 'military' and 'government?'
Adam McKay
#49. For 'Breaking Bad,' people were with Walter White for 99% of that show, even though that guy is a monster.
Adam McKay
#50. Normally when it hits two and a half, three hours, the audience gets exhausted and start yawning.
Adam McKay
#51. Nothing is more enjoyable for me than when I'm watching a movie or a TV show and there's that sense that anything can happen. It is the most fun feeling in the world.
Adam McKay
#52. You have to be able to fail with the improv. You have to not care.
Adam McKay
#53. 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.
Adam McKay
#54. Having two kids, I don't get out to see stand up much anymore.
Adam McKay
#55. Any time Chris Nolan wants to call me for advice, he can.
Adam McKay
#56. All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.
Adam McKay
#57. I want to see Brian Williams with no irony wearing a mustache.
Adam McKay
#58. There's nothing more fun than mean-spirited characters.
Adam McKay
#59. I think I'm better than Mamet, I would say.
Adam McKay
#60. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut teacher's salaries and parks and libraries rather than raise taxes for the many California millionaires and billionaires.
Adam McKay
#61. The living nightmare for a red state NASCAR driver would be a gay French driver.
Adam McKay
#62. Every time a congressman or pundit says its 'class warfare' to increase taxes on the wealthy, it's a massive lie.
Adam McKay
#63. The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.
Adam McKay
#64. My wife is pretty geeky and will occasionally quote 'Anchorman' at me.
Adam McKay
#65. Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.
Adam McKay
#66. Wal-Mart is the biggest distributor of DVDs out there, but personally, I think their manufacturing policies have destroyed our economy, and they don't pay their employees enough. I have massive problems with them.
Adam McKay
#67. Friends give me a hard time about the pants I'm wearing, which are made in China. Well, how do you find the right clothes? Or the right movie studio? The right people giving you checks? Good luck doing the right thing all the time.
Adam McKay
#68. There are so many shoot-'em-up, action, jingoistic TV shows and movies that are made every year. I think the final line is that Hollywood is populist.
Adam McKay
#69. I have certain beliefs about how people should treat employees and how companies should be run, but I was really surprised though this process to learn that those beliefs are actually good business.
Adam McKay
#71. My theme song is 'One Tin Soldier' by Coven.
Adam McKay
#72. I always give myself a little part in every movie.
Adam McKay
#73. I don't think there's ever been a moment in history where that, as an artistic message, has played very well, because people in their hearts know that's terrible and a lie.
Adam McKay
#74. If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
Adam McKay
#75. The one thing for sure is, I don't ever want to waste a movie. I don't ever want to waste effort.
Adam McKay
#76. 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.
Adam McKay
#77. I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it's there and to push it just a little bit faster.
Adam McKay
#78. First and foremost when you're doing comedy, you gotta be relevant and applicable to the times that you're living in. When you try and just do comedy about who is dating who and lifestyle jokes, it gets tiring after a while. It's hard to be funny in that realm.
Adam McKay
#79. The way you really stop Al-Qaeda is by stopping their funding. It's not by carpet-bombing or land invasions or anything.
Adam McKay
#80. You could feel America starting to ease up a little bit on racism, against blacks in certain pockets, and then suddenly The Cosby Show bubbled up and it was the right time for it.
Adam McKay
#81. You know how in every heist movie they get past the security cameras that show the hallway leading to the diamonds by jamming the screens with a fake signal of everything looking safe and quiet? Usually a guard coughs so they don't notice the blip from switching to the bogus feed.
Adam McKay
#82. For my money, I don't think there's been a better comedy than 'Kung Fu Hustle' in a lot of years. That movie just knocked me over.
Adam McKay
#83. Creative freedom is a huge carrot.
Adam McKay
#84. You need the audience to go on the ride with you. You can't just isolate them.
Adam McKay
#85. I was completely with the reality TV boom for a while. I really liked a lot of the reality TV, and the one that lost me was the ballroom dancing one they do, 'Dancing with the Stars.' That was the one where I watched it and I was perplexed. I thought it was really boring.
Adam McKay
#86. America is a country that prides itself on being able to identify a 'straight shooter' or 'the genuine article' when it comes to our leaders. As a nation, we can 'feel it in our gut' when someone is giving us a bum steer.
Adam McKay
#87. 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.
Adam McKay
#88. Dick Cheney and Bush's rise to power were built on tons of money from corporations and a dulled press.
Adam McKay
#89. For a documentary it's so important to find the characters and to find people who will give you access to film
Adam McKay
#90. I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.
Adam McKay
#91. The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying '24-hour news' almost has satire laced in it.
Adam McKay
#92. Animals talking are very rarely funny. But animals behaving as animals - always funny.
Adam McKay
#93. I always thought George Bush was more oblivious than mean, but oblivious can quickly go to mean.
Adam McKay
#94. 'The Real World' is the most predictable arc ever. They get on the show, they're all excited, we're gonna be best friends, then people start drinking and get hammered, and say stupid stuff, and that's pretty much it.
Adam McKay
#95. I have no tax breaks or corporate interests to be supported by Barack Obama.
Adam McKay
#96. The stuff that's going on is just so over-the-top, with the banking crisis and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, and the outrage hasn't quite caught up with the people yet. But when it does, I think you're going to see really virulent anti-authoritarian kind of comedy coming out.
Adam McKay
#97. Voting for Romney after the train wreck of that was the eight years of W. Bush is like losing your pay check playing a rigged game of three-card monte and then playing the same game again a week later 'cause the cards are a different color.
Adam McKay
#98. Ultimately, the only people who are in any way edified by hanging with famous people are you at the age of 11 and your mom.
Adam McKay
#99. You have a guy like Bernie Madoff literally steal $80 billion, you know, AIG steal hundreds of billions, Goldman Sachs. Crime has changed so much, and to really do a movie with, like, drug dealers or drug smugglers is kind of almost quaint at this point.
Adam McKay
#100. If you do a Western that's funny, there's no way people don't call it a spoof or a parody, even though it may not be.
Adam McKay
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