YouSaid · the spoken record

Jay Roach

lines on the record: 83
first: 2018-03-08
most recent: 2018-03-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, oh, he was the most blunt. Executive I'd ever seen. And I said, I hear you, Mr. Shay. And I showed him clips of other people's films that I love from the 60s that I thought were a great style reference. And I also had storyboarded with my storyboard artist, this whole sequence about the fembots and how they had ganged up on him and he had to seduce his way through these robots. And they hired me. It wasn't a super high budget movie at that time, it was like 16 million dollars, which was high-ish, but it wasn't compared to so many other films they were making. Pretty good return.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely, because they were quite resistant. I have a head and studio Bob Shea really said to me in a big conference table with a bunch of executives sitting like, who are you? We're not just going to hire Mike's buddy. Well, I don't know what you're thinking. I had no real, I had no directing.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seal Dick Cheney tricks, it was not planned, but it worked. I've made that comparison before. And he fought like crazy to get me that gig. And I had to go in and... So let me ask you”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“European pop art films, all these very odd off center films. And he said, I'm doing this character. And so he had me read the script and I gave him some notes. And he was so sort of taken aback that I dared to write a bunch of notes. And I said, here's what's great about it. But here's some other stuff that you maybe could think about. And he had told me, help me find a director. You seem to have a good eye. You have a shooter's eye. And so I was combing through commercial director reels of people because he thought maybe it would have a style. And I picked one for him. And he said, you know what, actually, I put you up for the job.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's right. I was working on, I had written a couple of TV shows that got made and I was working my way up. I probably would have had some kind of a career, but it took such a huge leap when he said how it came about was our wives have gotten to know each other and then we started talking and we loved Monty Python movies and old obscure kind of 60s and 70s.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really was accepting and to this day, you know, there's no issues about it. And I'm not particularly observant, but I still feel very connected to Sue's family. But I am very connected to my own family as well. I very strongly believe in the power of religious stories and what they do for people. I wish I was able to connect even more spiritually to what organized religion is all about. I haven't completely evolved to that place. But I have so much respect and reverence for what people believe in.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mom is still very religious, very strong faith in the Southern Baptist faith. But her sister, when she was young, eloped to marry a Jewish man. And it was a very big deal back in the late 50s when that happened. But she loved him so much. And my sister saw that and my grandmother eventually accepted it. It took a while, that in a way it paved the way. So I went to my mom and said she, again, she knew I hadn't really been attending. Southern Baptist Church for a long time, and she just saw how happy I was, you know, and she said, if this is, you know, if this is what matters to you now and this woman makes you happy, you know, I support you with all my heart. And it was a major.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is a great. I felt in some ways a fellow warrior is connecting to people who got me when I married into the Jewish faith.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so, you know, he was just an inspiration, you know. And so I went through the process and I passed the test. And the only question I got wrong, which he said, you know, I was supposed to get it wrong, was what's the most important day in the Jewish calendar? And of course, I said Yom Kippur. And he said, no, it's the Sabbath. And he goes, that's why people who convert always have to remember that keeping the Sabbath is the day. I went through all of that. Well, you had a prerequisite.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tanney Hoff's directed Susanna and the All Nighter, but did some other really cool, she did a cool short film called The Haircut with Casavettes years ago. She's a really great person.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His philosophy of life reminded me a little bit of Joseph Campbell. I read so much Joseph Campbell, and he's just talking about how religious stories matter and how, and it was related to my relationship, to his granddaughter, because by the time I got to know him, had already asked her to marry me. And he was a conservative rabbi. Susanna very much wanted him to do the service. And the only way he could was if I converted to Judaism. I had long since lapsed as a Southern Baptist, so it wasn't that big of an idea to convert. But I wasn't sure it would be meaningful or I would just be doing it out of some convenience thing. So I loved him and I wanted him to do the service. And she did too very much. So I went through a very intense process.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it means so much to me that you knew about that because obviously I'm always so proud. I knew Ralph and he was such an incredible person. But when I talk about him in LA or Albuquerque, you know, people have a tough time picturing what he was saying. Well, you come to the right place, brother. He was an amazing man. And one of the great storytellers, he reminded me, you know, talking with him about religion, about”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I fortunately got there first, but the other two guys were buying just as hard to get her attention. And she always said that because I showed up early, got there on time and actually pulled her chair out for her, that I had an insight. There's a lesson in that. Yeah. Chivalry works sometimes.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally blind. You didn't like show up and say, wait a second, you're a rock and roll star. Well, I knew who she was to, you know, she always was says she was glad to hear. I wasn't actually a fan. I knew the music, but I didn't really know that much about her music. And my friend who set us up said, oh, I'm having this thing. It was set up as a dinner party where there would be three couples being set up on blind dates and a host and his wife. It turned out at the restaurant when I got there, none of the women showed up except Susanna. So there were two other eligible bachelors. I was bachelor number three. Isn't there like a TV show like this?”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, that is, there are about seven or eight unbelievably lucky, lucky, amazing things that happen in my life. And meeting her on a blind date was one of those very weird, amazing things that happened that it's always tough to think I deserved it. It just was.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No waste of time and any of that. And you think, I'm not getting anywhere. And I believe me, I was definitely scared that I would never get there. And so many of my friends moved more quickly. But I liked the work. I really liked storytelling and being, you know, it's like being in the theater. Everyone's working, you know, operating lights. Everybody's building sets. And then you get your shot to be up on stage. I'm really glad I did that because I don't think I would have been ready to direct really the way I was when by waiting.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I see what you're up against. Let me tell you how this plays into the story. And I see this department, you know, the cinematographer, the editor, or the writer, which I'd always have on the set. I've been through what you're going through, but let's talk about it.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And keep doing it. It turned out when I did finally get a big break in 96, when I got Austin Powers, I had done so many different jobs that once I got on the set, I was completely...”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I didn't, I made a film, a short film that got a little attention in sort of the awards world as I finished film school, but I wasn't a good enough writer to take a meeting and they would say, where's your script? And I just didn't have that. So some of my friends got work right out of film school. And I instead, I started teaching. I taught cinematography there at USC for a few years. I worked as a writing assistant, which I always tell students who are curious how to break in is the absolute best job in the industry to break in because you're sitting there typing up the writer's notes, but the director comes in, the producer comes in, the actors come, everybody comes into that writing room. And so that's what I did. And I trained myself to write. I was simultaneously editing and shooting some documentaries, actually. But anything to just stay in.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and unfortunately when I got there, I had thought they had a more, I don't know, just a more all-consuming cinematography program. And they really didn't, and they really didn't have a documentary program at the time. And I started doing narrative films and mostly shooting at first as a cinematographer for other people's films and eventually editing and writing. And I sort of veered or evolved from a technical person and a visual arts person into being a storyteller through USC, which took me five years. I always say it's a great three-year program, the best five years of my life because I didn't have any money, so I kept stopping out and going back and stopping out. It took me about five years to get.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of pre editing mode because they're collaborating with you on improvising, and so you have to, you're always changing everything. You show up as storyboards and shot lists and you kind of throw that out at some point and just wing it. But if you have a sense for the frame and a sense for what matters about what you're doing right at that moment, why does this mean something and how can it mean more or be more compelling? Bend your intuition kicks in and you're like just sitting there like an audience member thinking what would the audience be moved by? So that's when the intuition is really helpful.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, intuitive. I think you want both. You want to prepare and overthink. I mean, I'm a worrier. I surround myself with worriers. I worry. Is this good enough? Is this heading up? And then when you're in the middle of it, you throw all that out and try to feel it. And it's one of the things I love about working with actors is they kind of force you to go into that mode, that intuition mode after you've done all the...”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, a lot of what you try to do, and I have my whole cinematic career, is use the frame as part of the story, part of the character. Every choice you try to make it serve the story you're telling and composition. And then, of course, once you start moving the camera, then it's how the camera moves, what the lighting is like. And all of the variables, I have elaborate kind of breakdowns as I'm trying to figure out what each thing will say visually beyond just the dialoger or the scene structure.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But with an artistic sense of the tensions and also the setting, the architecture, we use the photographer for LBJ as our inspiration for how to shoot all the way, for example, this kind of oaky, I forget his full name, but he was this great Japanese photographer. He made art in the middle of day to day work, you know, in an office. And so we started, we just used his photograph.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And film. I started shooting. I worked for this place called the Stanford Instructional Television Network, which was run out of the engineering school right at the kind of early phases of Silicon Valley. This was in 76, 77. I mean, obviously Hewlett-Packard and all those places were there, but it was nothing like what it is now. And people were taking engineering courses via video and we were also shooting documentaries. So again, another work study job. I got to make video documentaries. The idea of becoming a documentary cinematographer started to appeal to me. So that's what I took a class that summer and applied to USC Film School. And that's what was the next step.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hadn't done anything artistic before. My parents were such hardworking people. They had four kids by the time they were 25, and they never really had a chance to. To explore culture and those things. And so we would go camping and we would do family stuff, which was really important to us, but great for my upbringing, but it wasn't a cultural place. I got exposed to those things through these extracurricular activities and then decided, wow, this is really what makes me happy. So I ended up doing a short film that summer.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm really impressed with your research because I started working in a lot of work study jobs. I worked in the film department cleaning sound heads and I You know, sold ads for the newspaper and worked in the radio station, and I found there was a darkroom in the basement of my dorm. I didn't even know it was there by the fourth year I lived there, I discovered it. And I started shooting for the paper, shooting for my own sort of artsy instincts. And just being in that room printing and watching the kind of magic as the image came to life, you know, in front of you and beginning to manipulate it. I just I never had lost myself completely in anything like that before. And so I hadn't really.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God, it was completely, I was so in over my head. Sort of surrounded by people at perfect SAT scores and brilliant writers. My college roommate was a great journalist writing for the paper. And I was in thinking I might go into politics, but right away, I just kind of shrunk back a little bit and I look back on it now with a little bit of regret because I wish I'd majored in history or journalism or English. And instead, I majored in economics, which seemed very practical at the time.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was starting to become interested in politics. I didn't really, I wasn't very ambitious. I was a little shy, a little unsure of what I was, you know, I was a kid from Albuquerque. And I didn't, I only applied at first to University of New Mexico, University of Texas, University of Colorado. And I was thinking of going into something political science. And at the last minute, a friend said, oh, you should apply to Stanford. And I applied to that school and got in, ended up majoring in economics. But when I got there, I had never really been out of the state except for a couple months here and there on temporary duty with my dad.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was doing kind of everything. I mean, at the beginning of doing too many things began in high school. I was an athlete sort of. I was playing football and baseball. But I started working in a lot of extracurricular activities, running sort of public service clubs and the student senate and trying to be a good student. school. I went to a really good public school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which at that time was among the lower rated public schools, but we had some excellent teachers. And yeah, so I just was.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every Monday morning he would fly off to Vegas, go out to the test site, Nevada test site, and blow something up. He was actually started as a draftsman and then worked his way into mechanical engineering and designed some of the experimental packages that they would put in the tunnels down which the nuclear blast would travel. He would go back in after the shot, as they called it, and retrieve it and then fly home, you know, on Friday night, back to Albuquerque. I always wondered, you know, how much radiation he received he laid in life revealed he'd received way too much. And he's had so many surgeries, you know, and he's lost a lot of friends. It was a weird life for him, I think, but he was very proud of his contributions to the overall defense industry.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did worry about telling us a lot of time, so I don't actually know everything he did. There's an aspect of Meet the Parents when we did with Robert De Niro's character who was So, sort of professionally paranoid, you know, and was we lived in a kind of house of secrets like that to a certain extent. But I think it's a lot of it's declassified. He worked in the nuclear weapons program for a hunk of my youth.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I grew up in a kind of working class family. My dad worked for the defense industry there at Sandia Labs on Kirkland Air Force Base. Sandia Labs is affiliated with Lawrence Livermore in Los Alamos.”
2018-03-08 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 223 - Jay Roach · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source