At some level, you've got to have the ability to - especially in film and in front of the camera, you got to have the ability to drop into character and close off the entire crew and the camera and everything else.

I wanted to get more serialized. I had this idea for an event that would click onto everybody's mortality. I said, "I want somebody to die." Fortunately for me, when I was toying with that idea, John Landgraf, who's the head of FX but also a very smart executive, came up with the idea of the ashes in the maracas. He called me up and said, "Listen, what about this, they get the ashes in a box and when they get them, they shake them and they sound like maracas." And I was like, "Okay, now I've got my throughline."

We didn't have rehab back in the Seventies. Back in the Seventies, rehab meant you stopped doing coke, but you kept smoking pot and drinking for a couple more weeks.

You know why the French hate us so much? Thay gave us the croissant. And you know what we did with it? We turned it into our croissandwich, thank you very much.

I really, really like 'Eastbound & Down.' It's one of the few things that makes me laugh.

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I've pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid. But, yeah, it's not identifying, I think it's more a part of my natural DNA that I question anybody who has a plan. Everybody's got to have an angle; that's the way I grew up.

My wife and I were poor when I started but we struggled along until things happened for me in my thirties. I knew I was doing what I loved even if I wasn't getting paid for it, so I think I'd still be doing it.