We didn't realize it at the time, but the release date, the ad campaign and the poster are so important.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I don't know if I'd want to do that anymore, because you always get bigger laughs on college campuses. So, when the film plays in front of a city audience, you've probably cut too loosely.

I lose tons of stuff on the cutting room floor. For Scary Movie 3, for example, we had a lot of Matrix spoofs, a Hulk scene, and some of that stuff just doesn't hold up - it's too much plot, audiences just didn't want to hear about it.

Chevy Chase and Bill Murray - we thought those guys were funny. We love Bill Murray, but we didn't think they were right for Airplane! because it would step on the joke if there was a known comedian.

I believe in justice, maybe not in this life, but there has to be justice. And if there isn't a God, I think it would be very depressing. I'd prefer to believe there is.

Our producer Jon Davison thought it would be a good idea to put in additional TV scenes. So, they sent me a tape of these additional TV scenes, and I watched them, and I didn't think they were that great. I didn't think it was worth putting them in.

I think we grew up thinking that the funniest things on TV were the old, serious movies. I always liked the Marx Brothers, but the thing that always made us laugh were movies like Zero Hour. That's what inspired us.

Woody Allen has done some excellent serious movies, too, like Crimes And Misdemeanors. Very overlooked movie, I think, and really his best. And currently I like Big Fish!

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early '70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

I think that came out of watching all those serious movies for all that time. If you watch a movie like Zero Hour, Sterling Hayden is pretty funny, and so are the guys in the cockpit.

So, it didn't do well. But now when I talk to kids who are first seeing it, they're surprised to hear the movie failed at the box office. Sometimes that's what happens.

What I would do is a 10-minute short of some kind on video, and if it's good enough, you get it passed around town and just get some attention, so then they'll read what you have.

Tim Burton is underrated. I loved Big Fish, loved that movie, think it's the best movie of the year, hands down. Really impressed with that.

You know, OJ was a really nice guy, and he knew his lines. He was nice to everybody on the set. He got to be a better actor, I thought, with every movie.

I've always thought those guys are really funny. And I love Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin and Mary.

I don't take reviews very seriously, but in their totality I think they are representative of how the audience feels, and of what their reaction is. There's always one guy who doesn't get it.

Sometimes, if you really want to try something original, you step a little too far out of bounds. I mean, there's a market force that kind of unconsciously keeps you in line a little bit.

I would love to work with Adam Sandler. Because then all I'd have to do is just turn the camera on and off.

We didn't realize it at the time, but the release date, the ad campaign and the poster are so important.

I don't really know a lot of famous people. I've met a lot of famous people. If I ran into Tom Hanks today, I would have to remind him who I was and he would then remember me. But he wouldn't come up to me and say, "Hi Dave!"

We're producing a movie now, 'The Onion' Movie, and it's very difficult for me to be on the set. If I'm not right in the trenches, it's very difficult for me to watch another director, because I'm not involved and it's not exciting.

The only one that got through was Jimmy Walker, because he plays the gas station attendant. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just that we were kind of purists at the time, and we didn't want any comedians.

Our fathers were actually business partners in the same real-estate firm, and we got together and thought, How can we get a movie together and get distribution and create a new movie genre? We started by making satires of commercials.

There would always be a vote. There were always conflicts and arguments for years and years - that's why we're not together anymore. But there was always a vote. It was always two out of three.

Oh yeah, I believe in God. I think there's much more evidence that there is a God than that there isn't. I don't believe that Mother Theresa and Hitler go to the same place.

I think once we started directing separately - we each have different kinds of interests now, and the kinds of movies we want to do. I wouldn't hold your breath for that one.

It didn't happen every time for every movie. Ruthless People was a good movie, but we didn't get a good release or marketing. They completely blew the opening.

Quit now, you'll never make it. If you disregard this advice, you'll be halfway there.

Everything about it worked, and I don't mean just the movie, but in our experience, we realized there's also a component of luck involved in this business. We had absolutely the most competent people in the studio working on the release and ad campaign.

It's useless to try and make rhyme or reason of it, because one guy thinks one thing and the other guy sees a whole other thing. So I try not to take them too seriously. Lately I have them screened so I only read the positive ones.

I don't really know a lot of famous people. I've met a lot of famous people. If I ran into Tom Hanks today, I would have to remind him who I was and he would then remember me. But he wouldn't come up to me and say, 'Hi Dave!'

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

I hate wasting people's time.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

The work that we do during the winter is very important; we have a new bike and it's important to develop it during this time, and we start with this test.

Fortunately, I happened to go east at a time when live television was centered in New York.

I want to spend more time with those kids. I want to dedicate my time to train those kids and teach them what it takes, what they need to do to get to this level.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

Compared to today's salaries, our cut was minuscule but it was very good for the time.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.