My mother worked all of her life, she was a dance teacher and I also noticed, to be honest, that most of the male directors wanted to blow things up so there was like an open area for somebody who wanted to direct women movies, chick flicks, whatever you... I don't call them chick flicks.

I started as a journalist actually. I graduated from Northwestern Medill School of Journalism and with my degree discovered, once out in the real world, I wasn't very good at it.

You can't have an actor where the audience says, aw, that poor, sweet guy. You got to get somebody who's, like, nondescript in a way or just somebody that looks a little like they should get it. So this is all I learned actually learn from Lucy [Ball].

My partner after Fred Freeman was Jerry Belson. And Jerry Belson, after I was doing so well writing situation comedy, said, this is not good enough. We got to create our own shows. I said, but we're very happy doing this. No, no, no, you got to get your own show. So he made me - and he and I created our own shows. And we actually - everything we created failed. "Hey, Landlord" was our first show - 99th in the ratings. But imagine this - it's a great reflection on the years.

In the middle of Beaches there's a scene from the "Laverne & Shirley" TV show so they see some history of my work in each film.

We can't compete with Mel Gibson, but we figured we could do our part.

I'm a little older and I'm gonna do a bunch more movies and then they're gonna put me in a home for old directors.