The Weinsteins believe in test screenings. I don’t. I don’t think good films are made that way. Call me crazy, but I’d like to think you need a singular vision to make good art. – Terry Zwigoff
The last Christmas movie I really liked was ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ probably. It’s sort of a schmaltzy movie, but it’s not without its dark moments. It still gets to me every year. – Terry Zwigoff
I gotta tell you, I don’t have many close friends, and if I do wind up making friends with somebody, it takes me a long time, usually. – Terry Zwigoff
People like light and silly, and they like stuff that’s really energetic, and you get a character in a film bouncing around and screaming, people laugh. That’s all it takes. I don’t find that funny. To me, what’s funny is dialogue and nuance of character and performance. – Terry Zwigoff
I’ve stopped going to see art films because every critic gives them four stars and say things like ‘masterpiece,’ ‘spellbinding’ and ‘mesmerizing.’ I mean, they’re doing that with my film, but I don’t want to use those blurbs. Critical reviews aren’t worth too much anymore because just about every film can get one or two of them. – Terry Zwigoff
Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place – I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place. – Terry Zwigoff
Well, that was certainly – to me, until we could film in Charles’ room, I didn’t even want to bother filming anything else. And in fact, I did hold off and that was the first thing we filmed. – Terry Zwigoff
The things I want to make into a film, they’re personal, esoteric things, and I don’t expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will. – Terry Zwigoff
For a long time, there was this rumor that I turned down doing ‘Austin Powers,’ which is not true. While they did send me the script, I don’t think I was ever a serious consideration to direct it. I’m sure they probably sent it to 20 others as well. – Terry Zwigoff
I collect old Coon Chicken Inn memorabilia. I collect black memorabilia, like old minstrel posters. It was a real place. There was one in Seattle, one in Portland, and one in Salt Lake City. They started in 1925, and then they went out of business around 1958. – Terry Zwigoff
And I sense it was a rather constructed, almost half narrative fiction film in some ways. A lot of it was staged and manipulated to get those things in there that I knew to be strong. – Terry Zwigoff
I was inspired to do anything I could to get out of what I was doing… today, I’m motivated to pay the bills. – Terry Zwigoff
I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I’d rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa… I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better. – Terry Zwigoff
Maybe if I found something I was really passionate about, which is entirely possible, I would make another documentary, but it’s not a good career choice for anybody. I don’t recommend it. – Terry Zwigoff
That would be getting up at 5 am… I don’t understand why film’s shoot such brutal hours. I think it’d be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film’s would benefit in the end. – Terry Zwigoff
I think the other misconceptions when the film came out, he was very upset that it was so widely released and so widely seen. And neither one of us – well, I think I had hopes it would be, ’cause I really did think it was something special. – Terry Zwigoff
Luckily, he was in the process of moving to France at the time, anyway. But if he had stayed in the States, I don’t know how he would have handled that, because it was getting pretty crazy. I mean, a celebrity which he really did not welcome. And I can’t blame him. – Terry Zwigoff
When I went around promoting ‘Crumb,’ there would be days I’d wake up in, like, Houston or Cleveland, and I’d step outside the hotel and get no idea where I was. It all looks the same: one big corporate, consumer theme park. It’s all, ‘Here’s the Starbucks, and here’s the Gap, and we’ll go over to Banana Republic and the Cineplex.’ – Terry Zwigoff
I try to make a film that’s very entertaining, very funny, but also gives you something to think about. And the strongest thing I have to offer is my point of view, to get across how I see the world in hopes that it can change the way other people see the world, hopefully for the better. – Terry Zwigoff
People think I have an interest in comics, but I’m only interested in comics from the ’40s, like ‘Donald Duck’ comics. – Terry Zwigoff
Because I found myself telling the story of his family to people without the visual aids that I was able to employ by filming them eventually. But I very much knew exactly what I was going to do. – Terry Zwigoff
A lot of things I have turned down ended up being a big embarrassment. Like that script, ‘The Beaver.’ I thought that was one of the worst scripts I had ever read. But everyone said, ‘Ooh it’s on the Black List.’ Yeah, well, good for it. They’re a bunch of idiots. I saw the final film, and there were no surprises. – Terry Zwigoff
My hat’s off to documentary filmmakers. I don’t know if I’m ever going back to it. You’re treated like a second-class citizen at most film festivals. You take the bus while everybody else is flown first-class. If you’re a feature film director, you’re put in a five-star hotel, and if you’re a documentary director, you stay in a Motel 6. – Terry Zwigoff
Whereas my producer literally worked on this thing for 10 years and because I gave that presenter credit to David Lynch, she to this day never gets credit. It really kills me. – Terry Zwigoff
The main trouble with Hollywood is that the guys you have to pitch to, the guys who run the studios, are all business school grads. – Terry Zwigoff
It makes it difficult to decide which to go see, since no film about say, some tragic genocide in Africa is going to get a bad review even if it’s poorly made. – Terry Zwigoff
