The Complete Jacques Tati

“This is a box of Jacques Tati movies, but maybe we’ll just talk about… talk about one. Let’s talk about PlayTime. He’d done these successful, I think, very successful comedies using… where he invented this character, Monsieur Hulot, played by him, a kind of very ordinary French man with a little hat and a pipe. It’s really droll. There’s no out-and-out jokes. Everything is, again, him observing the modern world, its kind of somewhat inhumanity and ridiculousness. Anyway, great film.”

“Do I take The Complete Tati? PlayTime, Mon Oncle.”

“Here’s an entire anthology of the complete films of Jacques Tati. He’s one of my great comedy heroes, mainly because he and I are both ridiculously tall. A good deal of 3rd Rock from the Sun was stolen straight from either John Cleese or Jacques Tati. Of this group, the great classic to me is Mon Oncle. He just takes his time setting up a comedy sequence. It can take five minutes to build to this astounding payoff. And it’s a lesson in comedy. So that belongs here too.”

“Something else that I have always loved and that I think it came back a little bit with the kind of playfulness and childish way of looking at the world that you can see in Orlando is Tati. So yes, I think this is almost like a visual therapy for the mind, yes.”

“Got to go for the box sets. I've wanted this forever. I love Jacques Tati and honestly, the more I make films, the more I am just in love with any film that feels like it was just sculpted as its own universe. I rewatched PlayTime recently and it's almost like a music video before music videos existed. It's so ambitious and so gorgeous. So I'm very happy to have now my complete Tati.”

“So I was gonna take this Jacques Tati Complete, which is amazing. My son is three and a half... And I did start showing him some Charlie Chaplin stuff and he really liked it. And it’s great, I mean, if you have kids. There’s hardly any language, so there’s not a language barrier... But this is great because it’s like a cartoon almost. I was gonna show him Mr. Bean as well, so this’ll be a good… this will segue us into Mr. Bean.”

“I’m very attracted right here to The Complete Jacques Tati. Jacques Tati was a wonderful filmmaker who believed in a film he wanted to make and used his entire fortune... And it came out and it was a big flop, and he died sort of penniless, not realizing that this film he put everything up for, which was called PlayTime, was going to be considered today the masterpiece that we consider it. And more than a masterpiece because it’s a gift of a really good time, a really– lot of fun for everybody.”

“I wrote about PlayTime when I was in college because I couldn't get a print of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which is what I wanted to write about because the only copy was in Gena Rowlands' bathroom and she wouldn't send it to me.”

“Alors si vous permettez, je prends tout Tati. Tout Tati parce que là il y a rien à jeter. C'est la perfection. C'est notre Chaplin à nous. J'ai eu la chance de le croiser, de parler un peu avec lui et c'est vrai que tous les personnages de mes films sont des gens que j'ai croisé dans la vie.”

“Somebody told me you know I want to there is if there is one movie on Earth it's a Jacques Tati movie and this is a Blu-ray collection and I have a projector on my apartment and it's and with the Blu-ray it's going to be fantastic. Complete Jacques Tati, fantastic.”

“Here's a Tati complete, mine. This is my Revenge on all the great talents because I can do what I want with their work and they're not in the closet with me.”

“[Translated] Last time I came, I took a set of Jacques Tati's Blu-rays. This time I'm taking another set because I gave the last one to a friend. So this time I'll take the big one. He's a director I'll always like. I hope movies are full of humor. Although it's hard for audiences to see humor in my movies, I was deeply influenced by him, especially his use of scene blocking.”

“I'm gonna pick The Complete Jacques Tati. I think I've not seen most of his films but I've heard a lot about them and I really love French films a lot so I'm gonna use this and get more cultured.”

“And I start with Jacques Tati. Out of this complete collection, I would recommend Mon Oncle, because Mon Oncle shows the eccentric individual who clings a little bit to the past, without being obsessive about it, but he has difficulties coming to terms with what then made the modern world, and he does that by showing his nephew that there used to be another world that was more open to the childlike spirit. Yeah, so we’ll put that in the bag.”

“[Translated] Oh, there's a Jacques Tati box set! This is the best. Jacques Tati is French, and his films are comedies but not exactly cheerful... They're cool and he delivers gags with a straight face. I think that kind of humor has influenced my own work. I love that kind of comedy, so I definitely have to take this. This probably has all of Jacques Tati's works since it says 'Complete'. Is that right? I'll take this.”