However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.

The great thing about dealing with people about whom we have historical resources, is that if the writing needs work, there's everywhere to go to enrich it.

I think it helps to get a film made because people who put money in are nervous. They like to have something recognisable enough to make them secure that there's a pattern there - that someone else put their money into something like this and made it back.

I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.

What infuriates me is that in America violence is judged in context, whereas language is not. So with language there is an arithmetic that says: one f*** is a PG 13, two f***s is an R. They don't say: one bullet through one head is a PG 13, two bullets through more than two heads is an R.