Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser
Paul Reiseris an American comedian, actor, television personality and writer, author and musician. He is best-known for his role in the 1990s TV sitcom Mad About You. He is ranked 77th on Comedy Central's 2004 list of the "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time". The name of Reiser's production company, Nuance Productions, is inspired by one of his lines in the film Diner, in which his character explains his discomfort with the word "nuance"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth30 March 1957
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I was visiting my parents, and I walked into a room where my father was watching a Peter Falk movie on TV, ... I think it was 'The Cheap Detective.' Anyway, my father was belly-laughing, and he never really did that. I thought, 'If Peter Falk can make my dad laugh, then I'm going to come up with a movie in which Peter Falk plays my father.'
The most challenging part of being a dad is trying to postpone the moment when they realize you don't know anything. I love any sentence that begins with Daddy...? because it's implied they're looking up to you - that you'll have the answer. The truth is, I don't have any answers.
The most rewarding part about being a dad is just looking at children who didn't exist at some point. The first time you saw them, they were the size of a quarter, in a sonogram, and now they can pour orange juice and yell at each other.
In fact, I had the idea because of Peter Falk. I saw my dad watching a Peter Falk movie and something clicked in my head. I gotta go make a movie for Peter Falk and me
And in that time, I lost my dad and had kids of my own. It was like, OK, I get it now. I know what fatherhood is all about. And you look at your parents differently
In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That's not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It's a different point in both our lives.
The studios didn't know how they would sell it, ... It's not sexy, it has some older actors. But the strange thing is, I'm seeing people in their 20s and 30s walking out of the theaters laughing and talking about the film. And older people want to hug their kids after they see the movie.
I started writing this before I had kids,
People say to me, 'You made both these movies?'
People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family, ... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.
Bob, the guy who did 'Big Fat Greek Wedding,' immediately saw what everybody else chose to not see. This is not a little art film. Bob said, 'This is a big commercial hit.' He realized there's something about the movie that really works. It can play everywhere. It's odd when you see the things that are most personal can end up becoming the most universal.
Thanks for letting me be on the show with you,
I was having the best time of my life,
It felt very natural right off the bat. It was really tailor-made for him and mine was tailor-made for me, so it was easy to jump into.