"I'm not a great fan of musical comedies, and our major worry in the beginning was: that the sung passage weren't just sketches, that they be part and parcel of the plot and the emotions. And they're not complete songs; it's three lines here, three lines there... and that'd never been done." (Jean-Pierre Bacri)

"Alain had wanted to do a homage to the films of Potter (''The Singing Detective'', ''Pennies from Heaven'' and ''Lipstick on your Collar''...) which he showed us. And I felt the same thing as when he'd talked to us about ''Smoking''... I thought, ''It's daring, it's Resnais, I want to do it''. He said: "I don't know if it's going to work, but I really want to give it a try''. He's a creator, like a painter, who doesn't just want to paint a pretty picture, but to invent something." (Agnès Jaoui)