Quotes & Jokes by Paul Reiser / page 4
It felt very natural right off the bat. It was really tailor-made for him and mine was tailor-made for me, so it was easy to jump into.
Nothing would make me happier if Peter Falk would finally win his Oscar for this. Not just as the writer but as a fan and a friend. It would be so great.
Parents often give middle names just so that later, when they're yelling at the kid, they can drag it out. "Henry David Thoreau, you come in here this instant!"
So we’re on this plane, and across the aisle from us was another couple, about our age, traveling with their two children - a two-year-old girl and a very new boy who, though tiny in stature, had a crying scream so piercing, it was annoying people on other planes.
In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That's not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It's a different point in both our lives.
I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.
And after you've done the acting, there's a lot of places you can put your input - in the editing, in the production of it, in the rewriting of it and so on.
I'd never directed before and this movie's too important to me to put in the hands of some guy who has never directed. Even if it's me.
They don't see that whole pattern. Worm/death. Worm/death. I would catch on.
My wife would say my worst habit is that I'm not good at dropping subjects. If something bothers me, I'll bring it up endlessly and relentlessly. I think it's a search for clarity, but she uses different words.
When you realize you would consider not having a child just so you could take an occasional snooze and be available to see Batman Retires the same weekend it comes out, you have to take a good hard look at yourself and acknowledge, "I am a shallow, shallow person."
The most challenging part of being a dad is trying to postpone the moment when they realize you don't know anything. I love any sentence that begins with "Daddy...?" because it's implied they're looking up to you - that you'll have the answer. The truth is, I don't have any answers.
The biggest thing I remember is that there was just no transition. You hit the ground diapering.
New parents always sound like hucksters in a pyramid scheme. Anyone who has kids and then gets you to go and have kids gets a check from Huckster Headquarters.