My parents would watch movies like 'Big' and 'Freaky Friday,' and I wanted to see that kind of story told from an African-American angle. So I had the idea for 'Little,' and then I told my parents, and we all fleshed it out together.
My siblings and I, we were raised on TV and films. Not a day went by that we weren't watching one of three movies - 'Caddyshack,' 'Animal House,' 'Beverly Hills Cop' - on rotation. Our comedy, our personalities were set watching 'Sesame Street': these really sort of wacky, Jim Henson-y characters.
In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them.
Whether it's the experiments on 'MythBusters' or my earlier work in special effects for movies, I've regularly had to do things that were never done before, from designing complex motion-control rigs to figuring out how to animate chocolate.
I do enjoy animated movies.
When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. In particular, I loved animation and would love to have been an animator.
One of my favourite movies is 'Annie Hall' because it's about the silver lining of the break-up.
We don't make movies for critics. I've done four movies; there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who've paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.
I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.
The current distribution model for movies, in the U.S. particularly, but also around the world, is pretty antiquated relative to the on-demand generation that we're trying to serve.
I actually think every war movie is an antiwar movie in its own way - with the exception of some of the propaganda movies.
We don't make movies for critics, since they don't pay to see them anyhow.
I do like going to the movies, but I like eating tons of sweets and ice cream, so I can't go to the movies anymore.
There was never anything else I wanted to pursue. It was always theater, and movies are a fairly new thing.
I think, at one point, I'd been in the five most expensive movies ever made - not that I had large parts in them. 'Apocalypse Now' was one.
I wouldn't trade my career with anybody's. I'd trade a few movies with Tom Hanks - 'Apollo 13' and 'Forrest Gump' - but other than that, I love my career.
I'm not a Hollywood basher because enough good movies come out of the Hollywood system every year to justify its existence, without any apologies.
I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being.
When I was a kid, I thought movies just came from air. I thought they just appeared.
I wasn't one of those kids who grew up watching movies thinking, 'That's what I want to do when I grow up.' I didn't really particularly know I had an aptitude for it.
