When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me.

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is.

I was introducing [director and producer] Hal Roach - Mr. Roach was 100 years old, he was one of the fathers of early days in films, he put Laurel with Hardy, he created the Our Gang kids, and all these silent movies he did - he was a giant.

Change is such hard work.

At 60, I could do the same things I could do at 30, if I could only remember what those things are.

Nothing can take the sting out of the world’s economic problems like watching millionaires present each other with golden statues.

I have 40-something intros [that Davis Jr. did]; all are different, none of them happened. And it was hilarious.