My first few films were institutional comedies, and you’re on pretty safe ground when you’re dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.

First and foremost, you have to make the movie for yourself. And that’s not to say, to hell with everyone else, but what else have you got to go on but your own taste and judgment?

As much as we’d like to believe that our work is great and that we’re infallible, we’re not. Hollywood movies are made for the audience. These are not small European art films we’re making.

A psychologist said to me, there are only two important questions you have to ask yourself. What do you really feel? And, what do you really want? If you can answer those two, you probably can leave your neuroses behind you.

It’s like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it’s going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there’s going to be Some action.

I never work just to work. It’s some combination of laziness and self-respect.

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.

I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.

I always claim that the writer has done 90 percent of the director’s work.

I used to be married to a woman who pursued every spiritual trend with tremendous passion and dragged me along. I don’t believe in anything. I’d seen mediums and readers.

Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I’m thinking, He’s not talking about the movie.

Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He’s got 30 years on stage… there’s no telling him what’s funny.

We are all several different people. There are different aspects of our nature that are competing.

You can’t not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you’re on.

With both Caddyshack and Vacation, it’s not like the subjects were serious enough that they engaged my interest for another round. I love the characters, and the actors were great, but I didn’t see the need to make another Vacation movie.

I believe things happen that can’t be explained, but so many people seem intent on explaining them. Everyone has an answer for them. Either aliens or things from the spirit world.

You just make sure you don’t screw it up. It’s going to work as long as you don’t mess it up. Hopefully you have plenty of those moments in a big comedy.

My characters aren’t losers. They’re rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else’s rules.

We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we’re not working hard enough.

There’s a personal story of my own that I will write at some point, and it’s a film that I will happily make. It could very well be the next thing I do, unless someone shows me something great.

No matter what I have to say, I’m still trying to say it in comedic form.

My job is to come up with something that you like and you agree with that you would play wholeheartedly. If we disagree, I may not be doing my job correctly.

I’m not a believer in the pratfall. I don’t think it’s funny just to have someone fall down.

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I’m going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.

Nothing reinforces a professional relationship more than enjoying success with someone.

We were tremendously encouraged by the testing of Analyze That. Audiences loved it. They were telling us that they liked it as much as the original. We recorded the laughs in the theater.

I never read Playboy before I started working there and stopped reading it the day I quit.

Multiplicity was a movie that tested really well. People seeing the movie really liked it, but then the studio couldn’t market it. We opened on a weekend with nine other films.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.

I’d like to think I’d never do a gratuitous fart joke.

Acting is all about big hair and funny props… All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.

My first few films were institutional comedies, and you’re on pretty safe ground when you’re dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.

That’s one of the great things about DVD: In addition to reaching people who didn’t catch the movie in theaters, you get to have this interaction of sorts.

I’ve been directing for 25 years almost, and I’ve only directed nine films in that time because I like to be careful.