Quotes by Eugene Levy

I can't remember the last time I played a bad guy, so that was kind of an appeal.

I haven't seen it, but I know that [writer] Adam Herz jammed a lot of stuff into that script. I told him when I read it, 'Man, this is comedically relentless. These... raunchy's not the word, but it's close... scenarios that he comes up with, he just keeps coming up with them, and they're really funny, put in the right context. Incredibly funny.

I like playing villains - villains that aren't that bright, you know? That's always good. You experiment with a look and everything else. I'm thinking, 'OK, this is a guy, I think I can finally bring some mustaches out of the drawer.' I can see exactly what the look is. This is set in the mid-'80s... already, I'm ahead of the game. Glasses were down to here... they couldn't have been bigger! And the mustache is somewhere between Hitler and Groucho.

I love dumb, OK?

I mean, Jim's Dad is the character - you're not just laughing at what he's saying, you're laughing at who he is... On SCTV , we used to say, 'If somebody were to look at these scripts, they would wonder, who's investing money in putting this on?' Because you can't find a joke, you can't find, honestly, a funny line.

I'll look at the script and go, 'This is great. Ooooh, and I love this character, [but] I'm not thrilled with the way it's written.' But you can see how the character should work. So I usually do a lot of re-writing to make sure the character comes through my own eyes.

In ten minutes, I'm thinking, 'OK, you know what? I love these guys. They're really smart, they're really good, they've got a good sense of comedy, under their guidance, I think maybe this could come out OK.' But I didn't like the part.

Maybe it's because improvisational people have the same kind of understood language when you're working together. It really only took, like, maybe an hour... feeling out rhythms and things like that. But it wasn't a lot of improvising, and there wasn't a lot of fooling around on the set. I think we both like to know that we feel comfortable with the lines.

So, listen, different strokes for different folks, some people just like the joke, some people like to hear the funny line. The joke is the thing, and it works for them. Airplane!, the Zucker brothers, they perfected that art form - just an hour and a half of great, funny jokes. Fabulous!

The characters were part of the storylines that ran through each show, and then we went outside the studio to the town of Melonville, with Mayor Tommy Shanks, and there would be elections. We created a universe around those characters.

The greatest thing about doing this movie was that Chris and I both were involved in folk music in the '60s. I had a group, but I don't think it was at the same level as Chris, because he's an amazing musician.

The only thing I said was, 'Working with Latifah again would be fabulous, and Steve. But honestly, just try to... move it forward a little bit, don't rehash the same thing,' because I don' think any of us would be interested in doing that. But they're three great characters to put in a situation that's in a different place, so we will see.

There was nothing inherently, bitingly satirical we wanted to do about the world of dog shows and dogs owners. The characters in Best in Show loved their dogs the same way real dog owners love their dogs when they put them in dog shows. We weren't sending anything up there. We were just reflecting something that was real, and we just followed our characters.

This was more of a cartoonish thing for me and it kind of took me back to SCTV, in a way, where the characters are just a little broader and you can have that kind of fun going a little over the edge.

We went through all the scenes and they became kind of funny and they expanded a little bit and because it seemed to be working so well in the movie, they added a couple of things later on in the movie and that's how it turned out.