We were in production on a movie called All the Real Girls, which filmed in the Fall of 2001, and we really discovered who Danny McBride was, as an actor. When I say we, I mean me and a crew and a small audience that would hit the art house. He'd never acted before, and it was a really refreshing, eye-opening experience to watch him unleash, in front of the camera, all this comedic potential that we knew he had, as a human being and as the guy doing keg-stands at the party.

I always cast people with a sense of humor because people that are super serious don't understand when I ask them to eat a booger it's not necessarily about that. It's about something more. It's about inviting a little bit of absurdity into the process and humanity into the process. Making sure that no matter who we are and what sort of pedestal or glamorous lighting we're under, we're all eating boogers man.

I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director.

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.

I don't let technology and mechanics hinder me from a good time. During one of a film premiere there was a party in the other room; I needed to get to it, so I got out. I escaped. Sometimes you do what you can, you'll turn on your best John Maclean and get to it.

I've protected my protracted period of infancy. For many years. And I have no desire to become an adult.

One of the things I wanted to do after three, prolonged movies is to do something that was really, kind-of knee-jerk decisions, and artistic instincts and strip down the process to more of a guttural level, and make something that wasn't so manicured and polished; wasn't quite so developed and supported, and just run wild with it and see what happens with it.