Creating One-Reelers
“This is the way we made those one-reelers: Monday morning I would bring the group in and say, “You make up as a cop, you make up as a garbageman, you make up as a pedestrian.” We’d go out in the park, and we’d start to do something. By that time, I’d have an idea of what the sets were going to be. By noon, I would tell the set man what I wanted, and he would go back to the studio to get them ready.
“I don’t think we ever had anything on paper until we started making 2-reelers with lights. Nobody but me had any idea what the hell we were going to do. We’d try one thing, it wasn’t funny; we’d try something else.”
— Hal Roach, interviewed for The Real Tinsel (1970)
Quotes