Everybody's got their tools or their instruments, and it's fun to see how people expose themselves to their profession or their profession becomes who they are.

It is better to develop ideas with friends rather than the usual route of having a great idea and throwing it out into a production, and being surrounded by professionals who've been doing their jobs for years.

I've always had great independence on everything I've done. Nobody's ever told me not to do anything.

I saw how you could get away with such a free-spirited, naturalistic sensibility in a mainstream Hollywood movie, and you could apply a lot of the skills of the '70s icons that I really admire to a contemporary, commercial movie.

The difference between this film [Your highness] and Pineapple Express was pretty much in the logistics of the technical ambition of the movie, and the size and scope of the movie. Pineapple Express was a great success, and that was something that we wanted to capitalize on, but we wanted this movie to be bigger, more adventuresome, bring a bigger audience to the movie, and challenge ourselves to do something new.

Sometimes in the studio movies I've been working in, you'll put a joke in a movie because the crowd loves it - not because I love it.

Sometimes an actor doesn't sell an idea 100 percent. It just sounds like something that's coming out of their head. You can hear the gears whirring and they're trying to think of what the smart approach is to getting a line across.