Thomas Lennon Quotes

All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.

When you do a movie in the studio system, there's a committee. A committee of six or seven people you answer to. There's two or three producers, a studio executive and one or two people above that studio executive.

Yes, I am complimented on my work in Kids in the Hall once or twice a week. Its a nice feeling.

I feel like I'm the most well-adjusted character on the show, even though I'm sure the other actors would tell you the same thing about their characters.

That's the other thing about working on movies, the commitment is years. That's one thing that's so frustrating about the process is that it goes on and on and on for years.

The more people's money you take to do something, the more inputs you get.

Waiting for opportunities in the entertainment industry is an impossibility; they are not coming. You have to make your own.

Don't write something that is your passion project because all it will do is get the passion stomped out of you.

The only guaranteed way to make something not very funny is to make it vague.

I think people were not expecting us [with Robert Ben Garant] to, they were just like, "Well here come the writers," but we both were coming out of a sketch comedy background, so when we pitch a movie, we play every character in the film. You act it out, you perform it - you do a 10-minute performance of the movie.

The best thing that happened during the filming of Out Cold is that I forged a friendship with Lee Majors that endured for almost 12 weeks.

Nobody in Hollywood ever sets out to make a bad movie ever but about 99% of the time, that's what happens.

Being a working person who works for the studios. It's a minefield and there's tons of stuff you need to know. And people mess it up all the time.

It's such a great thing to work with people and not have a plan.

Old School has humongous laughs all the way through it.

I never thought I would write the way that I write for the studios now, which is like, not little novels, but be someone who literally is more like, you know, sometimes I guess we describe, we're more Salieri than Mozart.

You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done.

I guess I considered myself just sort of a sketch comedian, you know? Actual screenwriting hadn't really occurred to me as a viable job - I didn't really know anything about it.

People kept passing our [ with Robert Ben Garant] script around, and suddenly we had this reputation as screenwriters, which we're not - we're sketch comedy guys.

I don't think you can teach someone how to come up with good characters or a story.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

Who is writing these screenwriting books? Not actually writing for the studios in Hollywood. These are people that have one or a half of a credit on maybe one movie, or none. So they're all theoretical.

The good thing about being a writer is that you don't need anything except for a laptop. You can really do your own work and if you're not manically compelled to write all the time before you do it professionally, it's probably not a business for you anyway.

Before any movie of yours gets made, it will be vetted by the studio's marketing department. So, you do have to answer the question: Who is your movie for?

The level of acting that I bring to films in three dimensions. I hope they make people sign some kind of waiver because if their mind explodes from my acting in 3D, it's not my fault.

Being a movie star is stressful as hell. You've got to do crunches all day long. You've got to get up and learn lines.

I need to be spontaneous sometimes. Sometimes I find that the little detail or nuance that you add to it that's based on what's happening at the time that's not very rehearsed often ends up feeling like the funniest thing.

If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important.

The first record I bought with my own money was Rio.

I'm always doing what I can to look for and just feel out funny things that are happening in the scene and improvise off of them.

People love that monkey torture.

If you're a studio writer, the funny better be on the page.

Writing studio movies is the best job in the world... it's awesome.