Paul Feig
Paul Feig
Paul Samuel Feig /ˈfiːɡ/is an actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known for directing the 2011 film Bridesmaids, featuring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. Feig also directed the comedy films The Heatstarring McCarthy and Sandra Bullock, and Spywhich stars McCarthy, Jason Statham, and Jude Law...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth17 September 1962
CityMount Clemens, MI
CountryUnited States of America
If some magic thing happens, and everybody goes completely nuts, and does something we never thought of, the cameras catch everything. That comes from having camera people who are almost like actors and writers themselves.
Handheld camera is approximating what we're seeing when we're looking at each other, and kind of looking around, and your eyes whipping around. It adds an immediacy, where you feel like you are watching something through your own eyes, standing there with them. And that just allows you to take more liberties and have more fun with people's behavior.
People are like, "Why are you all dressed up? Did you dress up just for me?" I'm like "No, I dressed up because I'm an adult and I felt like putting on my suit." But I love it. Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren are my two heroes of clothing designers.
I'm not a painter who's saying, "I want people to see my work when I die; it will be this and that." That's not satisfying to me.
That's what I love about the mockumentary style, is the added thing of people knowing they are on-camera, which changes your behavior. That's why we sometimes do what we call spy shots.
That's the thing with women's movies - there's so much about kind of catfighting. And my experience is women aren't - look, we all get in fights with people, but it's not that face-to-face aggression.
So many stars who have shows are intimidated by having people around them be funnier than them. It's always the unsuccessful ones. Look at Seinfeld - he's great because he let everyone be hilarious.
Period costume films are fun to discover, but they're not relatable. It's more, 'Wow, that's cool - did it really look like that back then?' Whereas with a comedy, you're like, 'Yeah, that's me, that's my friends.' No matter what, I want people to relate.
To me, there's nothing funnier than funny people in peril, because it's just a great springboard for people to be at a heightened emotionality and things get funnier.
I love funny people, and when I'm with funny people, or people who are amusing in their weirdness, I love it. Because that to me is funny, as opposed to someone who stops and says, 'Hey let me tell you a joke.'
I'm extremely, extremely lucky to be who I am and do what I do and work with the people I work with. Even though I can always find something to complain about, I find it very hard to complain.
I can't impress enough upon people that if you tell an honest story that people relate to and people believe and invest in, you can do anything.
One of the many things I want to do is dig us out of that hole so that guys, in particular, can go: "Oh, yeah. Those people are really funny. I've seen that person. It's a woman. They are funny."
My wife and I don't have kids and people are down on us about it. But we're just not wired that way, so don't tell me I have to.