Todd Phillips Thinking Quotations

I think that 'Hangover II' is as funny as 'The Hangover I,' honest to God, but I think that it's a little bit darker, and the stakes are a little bit higher.

Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.

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.

You know, if I started worrying about what the critics think, I'd never make another comedy. You couldn't pick a less funny group than critics - you couldn't find a more bitter group of people!

I think people like comedies and I think concept driven comedies seem to be working when it's a clear concept and you deliver funny stuff.

Music is just one of the tools a director has with which to paint and I think it's one of the most effective.

I think a lot of American comedies tend to apologize for their bad behavior in the last 10 minutes of the movie.

I make decisions to do movies based on the cast. I'd just been working with Zach [Galifianakis] on The Hangover, and I was thinking, I've got to find something to do with this guy immediately.

I just thinks it's interesting what it takes an actor to find their characters through the wardrobe, or the hair, or the way a character walks.

When I was younger I was obsessed with 'Star 80,' and it's just a great movie - I think I saw it three times in the theater.

I think reviewers have become particularly venomous because, in a way, the power has been sucked from them. A 15-year-old can write a review on the Internet and it means as much as Roger Ebert's review, and that just makes Roger Ebert mad, so he comes out harder and stronger.

How many days do you have that are just purely dramatic? How many days do you have that are just purely comedic? It's usually a combination and I think that's what real life feels like.

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.