There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.
I enjoy comedy but it can become wearisome.
I’m not turned away from the church through anger, although I have criticisms of it. It’s through finding affirmation of life and illumination of life through creativity and art.
The Church at its best is about empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the dispossessed and not putting a price on everything and not being about the bottom line and not worshipping the market or everything that is material.
I don’t want to go around making everyone else agree with me. I don’t feel the need to do that.
The one thing that gives you faith is the fact that people can be apart physically but they can still have an emotional connection.
That’s what gives people hope – that you can still love someone from afar and you can still have those feelings across an ocean.
No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren’t religious, you can learn things from religious people.
I’m not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.
There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don’t buy any of that.
I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.
The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It’s a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.
I’m getting older, so I’m quieting down a bit.
A woman wearing a revealing dress will always be sexier than a naked woman.
I don’t apologize for my behavior anymore. Whatever I do or don’t do shouldn’t matter. Moral certainty is dangerous. Moral certainty is what makes people go to war unnecessarily and illegally. Morality, as any halfway intelligent human being would tell you, is a very subjective thing.
Depending on which side of the fence you’re on, you could argue that the sexual liberation of the late ’60s, led to women being emancipated in some ways. That they found a voice during that time, with feminism. It’s complicated.
When it comes to morality, I’d rather have an unfaithful president like Bill Clinton, who tried to reform welfare, than a faithful George Bush who propagated an illegal war on the rest of the world. So that is where my morality stands.
Look at the 18th century. There was a lot more freedom going on.
Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.
The rest of Europe tends to be very comfortable with sexuality. The British and the Americans are kind of hung up about it.
Far from being this big, booming voice, the Daily Mail is just a little man behind a curtain.