Legendary comedian and actor Billy Crystal is featured in the December/January issue of AARP The Magazine, available now, and chats about his real life inspiration, missed opportunities and why he’s bitter about Twitter.
On working on Parental Guidance
“The idea for Parental Guidance came from babysitting our two young granddaughters five years ago. Janice [his wife of 42 years] and I had them alone for the first time for five days. And on the sixth day, I rested. Then I went into the office and started talking about what we’d just been through: the old school versus the new school, trying to follow my daughter’s rules for how to handle kids, knowing what to say, feeling out of step with basically being a parent again, and not overstepping those boundaries. All that became the juice of the movie.”
On turning down Toy Story and saying yes to Monsters, Inc.
“I’m the dope who turned down Toy Story. Jeffrey Katzenberg brought me over to his house when they were making Aladdin and said, “You have to meet this young man.” It turned out to be John Lasseter … I thought John was a genius, but I got bad advice from agents and managers, then didn’t follow my own instincts. It turned out not happening [for me], and now it’s one of the great movies of all time. The next time John called, I picked up the phone and went, “Whatever it is, John, yes!” It turned out to be Monsters, Inc. “
On live-tweeting
“I go to see every movie I can because it lets me catch up on my tweeting. God, I hate that! It’s getting harder and harder to go to a theater without telling somebody, “Could you just turn that off?” I got furious one night on Broadway because I was doing my show [700 Sundays] and this woman in the third row was very clearly on the phone. So I started to play the show right toward her. I could read her lips: She was saying, “I have to go — he’s looking at me!”