I think this whole celebrity world is weird anyway. Weird and funny and kind of pathetic and yet so right for parody.

Well, this movie I've been working on for a while. I had the idea for the movie like twenty years ago when I was doing 'Empire of the Sun' in 1987 because at that time that's when all these Vietnam movies were being made and my friends and I were going on auditions for these Vietnam movies and my friends were getting them and going away to fake boot camps.

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.

I enjoy the work I do in comedies. It's a valid test of your creative abilities.

When I was growing up, This is Spinal Tap [1984] was the ultimate comedy, and it was the kind of thing I wanted to do. But you get to a point with parody where you can't go much further because ultimately it's feeding off of somebody else's creativity.

The big-name stars . . . are always going to be playing what they've played before if they want to remain so-called A-list stars. That's why someone like Johnny Depp is doing more interesting roles not caring about the size of the movie.

When you have kids you want to be able to go to movies and take the family too, and actually all enjoy it together. I don't think there are that many great, live action family movies that everybody can enjoy.