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
We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.
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
Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.
Once in a while you get a moment of clarity -- an inspiration -- and they don't come that frequently,
Once I let the story brew, I was able to sit down and write it in a couple of weeks, ... I always envisioned Peter in the role, because there are few actors like him. I wrote pages and pages of stuff for Peter to do, knowing we wouldn't have time for it. I wrote these long scenes with Peter ordering food in restaurants and things like that, because I know what he can do with material once he has his way with it.
I'm feeling very vindicated that, when I see the audiences laughing and being moved, we were right. This movie was worth making,
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.
I started writing this before I had kids,
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.
Any issues my parents went through are very prominent in the movie, even though they enjoyed a happy relationship, ... The story actually started for me when my mom told me a few years ago that because she got a job, she never made it to the World's Fair in New York, and that's a missed opportunity that always stayed with her.
Thanks for letting me be on the show with you,
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.
People say to me, 'You made both these movies?'
I got the idea 20 years ago, but have to clarify to people that I wasn't writing that slowly,