Tim Matheson famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

With comedy, you really want to work things out beforehand.
-- Tim Matheson

#Want #Comedy
I always wanted to be an actor. I was one of those lucky kids - or cursed kids - who always knew what he wanted to do.
-- Tim Matheson

#Kids #Lucky #Actors
I love J. F. K. My mother had been a worker on his campaign and adored him.
-- Tim Matheson

#Mother #Campaigns #Workers
I love JFK. My mother had been a worker on his campaign and adored him.
-- Tim Matheson

#Mother #Campaigns #Workers
I understood the workmanlike quality of a good stand-up. They all have this. There's a technique for everything you do. But boy, it's tough, 'cause there ain't anybody else out there but you.
-- Tim Matheson

#Boys #Quality #Tough
As an actor and a director, I always let my actors go... assuming they have good ideas.
-- Tim Matheson

#Assuming
Life has its ups and downs, so to expect otherwise is setting yourself up for disappointment.
-- Tim Matheson

#Disappointment #Ups & Downs #Settings
Funny is funny. You can be fooled by the eye, but if your performance is funny to the ear, it will be funny. I think it's that if you don't have the visual, you have to infuse the full personality into the voice.
-- Tim Matheson

#Eye #Thinking #Personality
I'd come up with one leg in theater, but never my first leg. I loved the camera too much.
-- Tim Matheson
Chevy Chase had been a bad boy with a drug problem, and had never really realized his potential. Fletch was the first movie he sort of straightened up on. And Michael Ritchie was Harvard-educated, 6'6", a brilliant director and political thinker. He was the guy the studio thought could handle Chevy, and keep him in check. And he could.
-- Tim Matheson

#Boys #Guy #Political
We wanted to make Tucker's Witch just more human and playful, because I don't think we see enough playfulness between characters on TV. It's like, "Who really gives a damn about two detectives on a case?" The sillier we went, the better it worked.
-- Tim Matheson

#Character #Thinking #Giving
I kept thinking that with all those first jobs, "This is the beginning of something!" And then nothing would happen. That's the real Hollywood.
-- Tim Matheson

#Real #Thinking
Meeting Jerry Mathers I remember thinking, "This is it, man. This is the Hollywood life! I'm an actor and I'm going to Jerry's party. This is how it begins!" I was 13 or 14, and I thought this was the beginning of something.
-- Tim Matheson

#Party #Men #Thinking
As a director, I know everybody's job, and I know how to do it. I can smell bullshit when someone's telling me it can't be done, because I've seen it done a hundred thousand times.
-- Tim Matheson

#Bullshit #Done
I love horror films. And I like chick flicks! I like to approach the different genres of moviemaking and explore them. And you get a little better the more you do them.
-- Tim Matheson

#Different #Horror #Film
I read Animal House and I said, "I will burn down a house to be in this. I have to be in this movie." I read 1941 and I went, "Well, if Steven Spielberg likes it..." But it just wasn't on the page. It was a very big, unwieldy thing, and there were so many characters. It was fun to shoot, but I didn't know what the core of it was.
-- Tim Matheson

#Fun #Character #Animal
There is something about the vocal quality of the actors who can really do it. Jim Burrows, the great sitcom director who directed Will & Grace and Cheers, when an actor comes in to audition for him, he never looks at them. He just listens. Because funny is funny. You can be fooled by the eye, but if your performance is funny to the ear, it will be funny.
-- Tim Matheson

#Cheer #Eye #Grace
I grew up on a set. The guys I hung around with were crew guys: the camera department, the prop guys. I was like the third kid through the door when I was a kid actor on Leave It To Beaver. I was always one of five guys who would have a couple lines. I was a journeymen actor in my first career, so I was appreciative of the journeymen on the set.
-- Tim Matheson

#Couple #Kids #Guy
Sam Kinison was one of the most compulsive people I'd ever seen. James Belushi was that way, and Chris Farley was that way. He was incredibly talented and made me laugh so hard, and there was nothing he wouldn't say. Such a unique, amazing, cynical, realistic, but still optimistic look at life he had. It was great fun to get to know him.
-- Tim Matheson

#Fun #Optimistic #Unique
Tucker's Witch was the first television I'd done in a while. It was just before Moonlighting, and just before you could get a little more outrageous on TV. We had a great premise.
-- Tim Matheson

#Done #Witch
I'd been working on more traditional movie sets and TV shows at Universal. All of a sudden, here we're on location in Animal House, and it's down and dirty and quick. It was the way the new commercial world was shooting; the way the indie world was shooting. These were lighter, faster cameras. It was a generational change.
-- Tim Matheson

#Dirty #Animal #House
To me, as a director and an actor, that's the main thing. "What's the heart of this story? What's the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn't have it, then why am I watching it?" Even if it's a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up - Judd Apatow, I love, because he's all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity.
-- Tim Matheson

#Silly #Heart #Love Is
Whenever I study a genre of film-making, Steve Spielberg is the first guy I go to. Even Catch Me If You Can, which is a very lightweight kind of thing, if you just look at the economy of the way he designs his shots and works around actors, the craft is amazing.
-- Tim Matheson

#Design #Guy #Study
John Belushi infused Animal House with this spirit of guerilla filmmaking. John Landis came from that world too, and all the National Lampoon writers were from that world. It was just chaos on film. Controlled chaos, though. We stayed very close to the script. It was a very formal kind of movie, if you look at it. Formally photographed and structured, with certain elements of improv.
-- Tim Matheson

#Animal #House #World
I had read the Animal House script, and by hook and crook, I finally got an audition. It was a great one. John Landis followed me out into the hallway afterward and said, "I've never done this before, but you've got the job. Now don't tell anyone!" I've never had a director do that. It was one of those Hollywood-dream-come-true stories. They saw me as a surfer or cowboy, not a preppie, but someone begged and borrowed me an audition, and I went in and got it.
-- Tim Matheson

#Animal #Cowboy #House

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