Top 50 Adam McKay Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Creative freedom is a huge carrot.”

— Adam McKay

2. “We’re always looking for the backbone, the central idea, and once you have that you know everything can circle around it.”

— Adam McKay

3. “I’m not against banking. Banking allowed our modern society to happen, it is essential. It connects the work through finance, so banking is good.”

— Adam McKay

4. “The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way, you can break the ice. It’s crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.”

— Adam McKay

5. “Every time a congressman or pundit says its ‘class warfare’ to increase taxes on the wealthy, it’s a massive lie.”

— Adam McKay

6. “Obamacare is a private mandate that will drive billions to the insurance industry, much like the auto insurance mandate. Hardly socialism. In fact, it was a Republican plan to begin with.”

— Adam McKay

7. “White-collar crime has been marketed – billions of dollars have been put in to have us be bored by it.”

— Adam McKay

8. “The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers. In general, people like that are going to be more progressive, more open minded, a little more altruistic.”

— Adam McKay

9. “David O. Russell is probably my favorite filmmaker. He’s not only a great director, but he’s also a great writer.”

— Adam McKay

10. “For my money, I don’t think there’s been a better comedy than ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ in a lot of years. That movie just knocked me over.”

— Adam McKay

11. “I got the sense that Alabama is a place where people don’t want handouts and don’t much care for people talking out of the side of their mouth.”

— Adam McKay

12. “Old man with an old phone. That’s never not funny.”

— Adam McKay

13. “The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying ‘24-hour news’ almost has satire laced in it.”

— Adam McKay

14. “There’s nothing the people love more than a Federal Reserve joke.”

— Adam McKay

15. “Animals talking are very rarely funny. But animals behaving as animals – always funny.”

— Adam McKay

16. “Everyone is sort of in their own little area counting lines and no one talks when film’s not rolling. There’s constantly actors coming to me back behind the monitor screaming at me, “Why did my line count drop?” It’s a nasty tense environment.”

— Adam McKay

17. “I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.”

— Adam McKay

18. “Blanket cynicism toward government has always existed.”

— Adam McKay

19. “I gotta say – if I clicked on a movie interview, and the first part was all about Walt Whitman, I’d love that article.”

— Adam McKay

20. “I’m just a giant film fan, so I love action movies out of all kinds of movies. As a film geek, it’s amazing to be able to shoot this stuff.”

— Adam McKay

21. “You have to be able to fail with the improv. You have to not care.”

— Adam McKay

22. “All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.”

— Adam McKay

23. “Celebrities and ‘famous’ people are just regular folks. I know, it’s a shocking and potentially dangerous statement.”

— Adam McKay

24. “Can anything good come of a backward way of thinking like judging someone based on skin color? No way.”

— Adam McKay

25. “I have certain beliefs about how people should treat employees and how companies should be run, but I was really surprised though this process to learn that those beliefs are actually good business.”

— Adam McKay

26. “The crush of lobbyists on Washington and purchase of the media by corporations has created a big business-run government and a worthless press leaving Americans screwed and ill-informed.”

— Adam McKay

27. “As for movies, what’s great about comedy is that if your movie gets laughs and makes money, you have freedom.”

— Adam McKay

28. “I don’t want to speak for my movies; you could say my movies are just completely silly and dumb, but in the case of ‘Idiocracy’ and ‘Borat,’ without a doubt there is a really subversive and sophisticated assault on American culture.”

— Adam McKay

29. “There’s always way less improv than people think. The truth is something like 15 percent.”

— Adam McKay

30. “The one thing for sure is, I don’t ever want to waste a movie. I don’t ever want to waste effort.”

— Adam McKay

31. “I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it’s there and to push it just a little bit faster.”

— Adam McKay

32. “Anyone in the comedy world knows that Horatio Sanz and Chris Parnell are two of the funniest guys around.”

— Adam McKay

33. “There are many aspects to directing that have a romantic place in people’s minds.”

— Adam McKay

34. “It so happens that America, according to all the polls that are out there, is pretty progressive. So you’re not going to see messages that support Ayn Randian individualism at the cost of the whole, because most people don’t agree with that.”

— Adam McKay

35. “If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.”

— Adam McKay

36. “I think American culture had just become so disengaged from the process of government, and we’d been so fuzzed out by our pop culture around us, that I don’t think people really saw this guy for what he was.”

— Adam McKay

37. “For a documentary it’s so important to find the characters and to find people who will give you access to film.”

— Adam McKay

38. “Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.”

— Adam McKay

39. “It’s just funny that Americans have to contend with 2000 channels, and 60 different specific news sources, and the confusion that it creates, and the junk that we get to see is hilarious.”

— Adam McKay

40. “In general, the final filter of Hollywood is for-profit. Nothing goes through unless it can make money.”

— Adam McKay

41. “All we have is our vote. But it’s powerful.”

— Adam McKay

42. “Any time Chris Nolan wants to call me for advice, he can.”

— Adam McKay

43. “Hollywood is for-profit, is what Hollywood is. All the studios are owned by big, megacorporations that are the furthest thing from liberal you can possibly imagine.”

— Adam McKay

44. “You could feel America starting to ease up a little bit on racism, against blacks in certain pockets, and then suddenly The Cosby Show bubbled up and it was the right time for it.”

— Adam McKay

45. “I always give myself a little part in every movie.”

— Adam McKay

46. “In general foreign invested companies who come to America to start a company, to open a manufacturing business or whatnot, they actually provide much higher wages than American companies.”

— Adam McKay

47. “Nothing is funnier than confidently doing the wrong thing.”

— Adam McKay

48. “We get so much information during the day that doesn’t really tell us anything.”

— Adam McKay

49. “I could see how people get addicted to animation, and I understand why it’s so great for comedy. You can do whatever you want and it just happens.”

— Adam McKay

50. “Dave Herman as Michael Bolton is one of my favorite performances ever.”

— Adam McKay