Craig Mazin

Governments are different, and philosophies are different, but when it comes down to it, a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher. A butcher is a butcher is a butcher. We are people. And we are far more common than we ever imagine. ”

I love comedy. I love the absurdity of it. I love the kind of intelligence that's required to be dumb in comedy. ”

I was 15 when Chernobyl happened, I've been vaguely thinking about it for most of my life. But somewhere around 2015, it occurred to me that I didn't know how it happened, which seemed like a pretty bizarre lapse in my understanding of the world and how it functions. ”

In the case of 'Chernobyl,' we're telling a story of a government that runs on lies the way cars run on fuel, and there are people who ultimately end up paying the price for those lies - and a certain culture of denial is in place, and the degradation of expertise is in place. ”

The strange rejection of the expert is mind boggling to me. When we're told that the worst word in politics is 'elite,' I have to wonder whom else are we supposed to be rooting for if not the most qualified and smart and informed people? ”

When you look at the history of slavery in the United States, and you see the impact that 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had, culture sometimes is the only way that we can put people's eyes on an emotional truth and make them feel why something has to change. ”

Our culture reflects back what is true. It doesn't always reflect it back reliably. It can distort things. ”

Women are suspicious of this male ritual of the bachelor party and are suspicious of what men do and say when they are not being watched by them. ”

Basically, the last 30 minutes of 'Goodfellas,' that was my neighborhood... literally. There were people on my street who did nothing but just wash their car all day and wait for a package, and that's what I thought being an adult was. ”

There are the movies that should never be made and resist being made until, through sheer brute force, somebody finally makes it. And then, there are the movies you can't stop from being made because they just want to be made. ”