I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.
Nicholas StollerLike everyone is either, "I grew up with it," or "I loved it," or loved them now. And when you watch The Muppet Movie now, it is so current. It's like The Simpsons before The Simpsons. It's not as cynical as The Simpsons would be but it's self-aware and there are a billion jokes, it breaks the fourth wall every five minutes, it's astounding, it's awesome. It's very exciting to be a part of that.
Nicholas StollerI mean we certainly always shoot a lot of extra material, but our goal was to make kind of like a big kind of rock-and-roll road trip comedy that has heart and that has hopefully you feel bad for Russell and you feel bad for Aldeus and also I wanted to surprise people with some of the turns in the movie and I think when I watched it with audiences they certainly...the reactions made me think that we did and so all that I'm just very excited about it.
Nicholas StollerWhen I was writing the script I thought he is this guy. I really hoped...I kept imagining him as that guy. And then he came in to audition and I was really nervous because I really wanted him to do Greek, you know? And he...I didn't know who else I could cast. And he was amazing in the audition. Really funny.
Nicholas StollerThe Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.
Nicholas StollerAnd also, I'm most comfortable with like two people just sitting and talking about their feeling, you know, in a room with like two cameras and that's it. And I wanted to do something where there was like action and running and you know crowd scenes and big set pieces and certainly did a lot of that, so yeah.
Nicholas Stoller