If you make action movies, the critics will savage you, and then your movies are outdated the following week with the new wave of special effects.

Most of what's tricky about comedy is the perception of it and the audience's expectation.

The idea of 24-hour news, if you really step back, is pretty insane. Just even saying '24-hour news' almost has satire laced in it.

As far as how much you listen to the audience, you listen to them when they really hate something.

I think that the job of art and culture is to jump on that time and realize that it's there and to push it just a little bit faster.

When you screen it the first couple times, you're just trying to get the movie to work, trying to get the story to flow, trying to find out where your areas are where you have enough breath to laugh a little bit. So you're doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it's working, and at that point, it's 50/50 as far as what's funny and what's working. Sometimes you'll put something in and it will just die so hard that it'll almost kill the movie.

The one thing for sure is, I don't ever want to waste a movie. I don't ever want to waste effort.