Garry Marshall
When I was five years old, my parents gave me a drum set for Christmas. My mom played the piano, and Dad played the saxophone badly. But that Christmas morning, I remember we all played together, and I thought it was the greatest day ever.Collection: Christmas
In the education of the American people, I am Recess.Collection: Education
Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editing.
My first name, with the rare two-r spelling, came from a sportswriter named Garry Schumacher. My parents didn't know him personally, but my mother liked the spelling.
When in doubt, you bring in relatives. Nepotism is a part of my work.
I am a total believer of making the process a good time - make it memorable, have some fun, try to shoot high in your quality and then don't get crazy, see what happens.
Religion has a good place and it has its good people.
We can't compete with Mel Gibson, but we figured we could do our part.
It's a hard job. It means giving up some things, but on the other hand they keep saying you can have it all. You can't really have it all so easy. You can do a little of this and little of that.
When I edit, I'm not from the school of Hello, I'm a genius, so everybody shut up. I'm from the school of Let's play it once in front of an audience, and then I'll tell you where it is going.
I don't sit well. I like to move around as I talk.
There's no better satisfaction than writing. I feel that writing is the best and everything else comes with it.
You go to a theater now and you literally see parents watching the movie and they suddenly cover their kid's ears. I figured I'd make one movie where they didn't have to do this.
There is more to life than show business.
I try to find scripts of stories that kinda celebrate the human condition... let's talk about the tough world out there and the human spirit overcoming adversity.
I was a journalist. I was a drummer. I was everything. I didn't know what the heck I was. But with Jack Paar, the job was very specific - no confusion. You came in each day. You wrote five pages of jokes. You handed the pages in... The pressure was to write five pages of jokes every day. I did it, and I thought, 'This is what I like to do.'
I didn't want to do movies with hundreds of camels crossing the desert followed by tanks and this and that.
My mother was funnier than anybody I ever worked for. My father was as funny as this coat. Not a laugh a minute, my father.
Some journalists are pestier than others, so I find out where the pests are. I am careful with my actors and actresses. I come back and tell them, 'Watch out for this one or that one.' People are surprised I do that. But I watch out for them even after the movie is over.
A lot of people come work with me because I keep an open set, and people can visit. Julia Roberts used to have friends visit on 'Pretty Woman.'
I must confess that the original 'Pretty Woman' was terrific and a hit, but I always felt that creatively I didn't do justice to Richard Gere's character. So in the musical, we have some great new moments for Richard's character.
My happiest moments of growing up in the Bronx were when my mom would bring home a new sports magazine from the candy store. I would jump out of bed and grab it from her. Then I'd rip the front cover right off and tape it to my bedroom wall.
I never got beaten up, because I was a wisecracking jokester. I could make a bully laugh before he delivered a punch.
I always wanted to be known as the Norman Rockwell of television, and 'Happy Days' represented the part of me that wanted to make mainstream America laugh.
It's always helpful to learn from your mistakes because then your mistakes seem worthwhile.Collection: Mistake
Learn to work with people you wouldn't go to lunch with.Collection: Lunch
If you’ve got the comedy eye, you can look at any situation and see the humor in it while others don’t.Collection: Eye
I am a total believer of making the process a good time - make it memorable, have some fun, try to shoot high in your quality and then dont get crazy, see what happens.Collection: Fun
Never underestimate the power of your sister.Collection: Underestimate
[The movie Beaches] was really about how women fight. Women fight, say terrible things to each other and an hour later they make up and go shopping. I think they got the better idea of how it should be done.Collection: Beach
Women are pretty good. Women usually fight about some stupid guy and then when they figure out it's just a stupid guy they make up and move on.Collection: Stupid
There's no better satisfaction than writing. I feel that writing is the best and everything else comes with itCollection: Writing
One of my thrills of the business is to find young people, there's a window. I like young people who are in that brief window between on their-way-up and rehab. In that window I can make stars. It's not really true but it's not so far off.Collection: I Like You
I wrote three years for Lucille Ball. She taught me everything I know about physical comedy...Collection: Years
Editing is the only process. The shooting is the pleasant work. The editing makes the movie, so I spend all my life in editingCollection: Editing
People always say, well, how do you get through show business? How do you swim the waters? And how do you survive and all that? I had a very solid method, and that is team up with ambitious partners.Collection: Team
I think a lot of creative people have no sense of numbers and economics.Collection: Thinking
I'm basically a writer, it's who I am. I direct and I like theatre directing very much. But I've done 17 movies, they don't say 'Let's get Garry, he'll make a helicopter shot,' they say 'Get Garry, he'll fix the script.'Collection: Who I Am
I was very proud of that, of taking women and making them vulnerable and so I continued doing that. Right after Beaches I did "Pretty Woman", then I did "Frankie and Johnnie" and then I did "Other Sister" and "Princess Diaries" so that helped me get into the vein there of understanding women and trying to make them very pretty and very interesting.Collection: Beach
I made nepotism an art form, so I get to work with a lot of relatives and they're part of it.Collection: Art
If you're creative, they let you be the showrunner, producer. The first thing my partner and I did as producers was hire ourselves as directors - because who else would hire me?Collection: Creative
I dont sit well. I like to move around as I talk.Collection: Moving
I played a lot of ball and got hurt, stitches and this and that. That, sometimes they said, built character. I don't think it built anything.Collection: Hurt
My partner after Fred Freeman was Jerry Belson. And Jerry Belson, after I was doing so well writing situation comedy, said, this is not good enough. We got to create our own shows. I said, but we're very happy doing this. No, no, no, you got to get your own show. So he made me - and he and I created our own shows. And we actually - everything we created failed. "Hey, Landlord" was our first show - 99th in the ratings. But imagine this - it's a great reflection on the years.Collection: Writing
Now women are rising to great positions and they run most of the studios now.Collection: Running
You can't have an actor where the audience says, aw, that poor, sweet guy. You got to get somebody who's, like, nondescript in a way or just somebody that looks a little like they should get it. So this is all I learned actually learn from Lucy [Ball].Collection: Sweet
I had never done a Director's Cut narration on Beaches so I did in time for the release of the DVD. It was a great visit and I do a whole-behind-the-scenes thing and I tell stories about Bette [Mudler] and Barbara Hershey and everybody and that was fun. It made me cry again.Collection: Beach
I like to get up in the morning and see people.Collection: Morning
I started as a journalist actually. I graduated from Northwestern Medill School of Journalism and with my degree discovered, once out in the real world, I wasn't very good at it.Collection: Real
[Beaches] is a pretty picture and I just liked having somebody like Bette [Mudler] who can be flying in the big comedy scenes and have her do more like a realistic part.Collection: Beach