Quotes from Paul Morrissey

Every movie I've ever made says the same thing. They all find comedy in people trying to live their lives without any rules.

I think it's absurd to believe that movies should look like paintings and say something like serious books say something.

Even Andy never hung his own paintings. He'd sell them or put them in a box.

It's good to aggravate people a little. It makes them pay attention.

Nico was peculiar. She was extraordinary.

It's not a secret, but if you know what the hell you're doing, you pick good actors. And you know what makes a good actor? A good personality in the performer, in the person.

Andy was a nonverbal person; you couldn't get directions out of him. All he knew was what was modern in art was what wasn't art: The telephone was art, the pizza was art, but what was hanging on walls in museums wasn't art.

If I thought about planning, I'd plan movies. If I thought about planning my life, I'd plan my life more rationally, not like New Yorkers who live their lives so irrationally, without reason. Maybe that's the connection between my movies and New York: the movies have the same kind of lack of overall design.

I did say to myself one day, 'I'd love to be a Jewish comedian,' but that's my only memory with any connection to show business.

The people of Pittsburgh should have a weekend flea market at the Warhol. Andy would have loved that kind of stuff.

My films always play better outside of New York, especially to critics.

Andy was an offbeat personality, shy and insecure. The whole reason for taking a camera with him wherever he went was because he was so shy. He'd break the ice by taking pictures.

I've always been an independent producer. I'd kind of like to be hired help for a change. I don't mind that.

Very few people took sordid things and made comedies out of them.

We are always getting photos and publicity from people who want to act in Andy's movies. We always throw them away. They don't seem to realize that the last thing we'd put into a movie is an actor. Because all the other movies use actors.

Somewhere in the '60s, actors became wimps and basket-case psychotics.

I adore jokes. They're a theatrical contrivance, but the irony of all fiction is that you approach reality by avoiding it a bit; you spoof it a bit.

Andy wasn't capable of any complicated thoughts or ideas. Ideas need a verb and a noun, a subject. Andy spoke in a kind of stumbling staccato. You had to finish sentences for him. So Andy operated through people who could do things for him. He wished things into happening, things he himself couldn't do.

You can't have the real thing on camera - that's the nature of cinema. When you see people like Daniel Day-Lewis and Ralph Fiennes screaming and hyperventilating, you're seeing the phoniest kind of bad acting. You may as well have a 'men at work' sign. It's not acting if you can see it.

I like the idea of stepping back into another time period.

None of my films are comparable to anybody else's. So many years after I made them, nobody's been able to copy them.

I love Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, but not Charlie Chaplin.

Andy was a character, and the two of us did have some things in common. We appreciated funny things, didn't like serious things.

I'm not against censorship in principle. Not at all. Some things should be censored.