Chris Rock Quotes

When you sit and watch the film with an audience, the focus groups and the cards and all of that is the less what you're worrying about. When you watch a film with an audience you see what is working and what's not working.

The thing that is incredibly helpful is that we screen the movies and we ask the audience if they like it or not and we ask a lot of questions and do testing on the movies. For comedies, at least, it's very helpful. If they're not laughing and they don't say that they loved it, then I have screwed up.

I love test screenings. Some directors don't, I know. But I love it. I think it's because I come from the theatre and in the theatre, previews are where you really have to listen to the audience and really feel how they're responding. I found our test screenings incredibly useful.

I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.

You never really know until you put the movie in front of an audience. I am a big advocate of screenings, which are getting harder and harder to do nowadays.

Our audience tells us what they love, what they don't like, and - worst - what they don't care about.

When you write something, at first you might feel very defensive and protective of every single thing, but after a while, you just see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes you do test screenings, and an audience tells you that, or sometimes you eventually just go, 'Let's cut the joke out.'

Feeling supported when you are doing comedy is the best way to make comedy - at least, that's how I think.

You learn quite a bit about your film from test screening audiences.

I'm the biggest proponent of test screenings now. There's two ways to face test screenings. For dramas, I don't know if I would rely on them as much, although I still think you need them, because you're making a movie for an audience at the end of the day. But with comedy... You could go through a script or anything I ever worked on, where you go, "This is hilarious," and you put it in front of people and you get nothing. And then the other side of it, is something you're like, "I think this is really stupid," and it gets a giant laugh.

The audience is never wrong.

I remember seeing Eddie Murphy RAW and seeing people laughing and having a good time and that was the same response I was getting so I thought I was on to something.

There's downtime in music, which obviously is necessary or else you'd lose your mind in other ways, but if we're on tour and there's electricity from the audience, if you're getting a good response, then that's the positive side of the mojo where I could feel cocky and just know I'm doing good and then there's a time all of a sudden when you're alone and you just don't know if people will like it.

To me the cynics are the ones in the boardrooms with the reports from the focus groups.

Delegate - work smarter not harder; do what you do best and drop the rest; get control of your calendar; do what you love because it will give you energy; work with people you like so your energy isn't depleted.

I'm able to bring business expertise but, more importantly, operating experience. The people here at Google are young. Every day there are lots of new challenges. I keep things focused. The speech I give everyday is: "This is what we do. Is what you are doing consistent with that, and does it change the world?"

It's all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting them. You have to get out of the way so YOU can focus on the bigger vision. That's important. And here's the main thing....you must make them see their work as a MISSION.

Conducting is intensely social. You work with a hundred people every day. You collaborate, you try to focus their thoughts, you try to give them a concept, you try to inspire them, and it's actually exhausting.

What you hear in focus groups and conversations, people will give you 20 minutes of rage about how the borders are out of control. But then you start saying, practically, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about the 11 million here? What are we going to do to get some workers we need for the farms? Then people start having a normal conversation.

If you don't concentrate on counting the money, people soon realize that money is not the focus of your consciousness, so they give you everything other than money: kudos, acclaim, praise, etc., etc. And sooner or later you'll be in trouble.

I think the purpose of test screenings is different for the studio and for the filmmaker. For the studio, I think they want to know whether the film works or not.

I think testing films are a great tool. And I think showing them to people that you value their opinion is important, but once you give over to what reviewers think, that's tricky. You don't know what their agenda is; it's so subjective. You have got to make sure you are asking someone's opinion who you know.

I don't know what's funny and what's not so I test out all of my material in front of audiences.

I like to focus on what I'm doing now, which is giving back. I've done interventions with people I've been close to.

Give a lecture to a thousand people.One walks out and says,I'm going to change my life." Another one walks out with a yawn and says,"I've heard all this before."Why is that? Why wouldn't both be affected the same way?Another mystery."