I feel like I came from a generation where... We didn't have Vietnam. We didn't have World War II. Nothing cultural was thrust upon us to make men out of us, so you're kind of free to not grow up that way if you don't want to.

I guess bittersweet is probably my favorite tone, as a lover of Woody Allen and Federico Fellini and the French New Wave. You know, old Hollywood, sad movies. I guess it's my picture of suburban life, a lot of it being very, very lonely. I wanted to have that infused into the feeling of it.

I'm a huge fan of Zach's [Galifianakis] and I auditioned Zach a million years ago on a movie called Duplex which I was fired from. But Zach came in - It was like 2000, maybe - as a buddy stand-up that people were starting to notice and there was something about him I loved. He wasn't quite right for the part in [Keeping Up with the Joneses] and I got fired anyway, so who cares? But I always wanted to work with Zach.

It actually took me 20 years to want to write about my youth. I was definitely always a little intimidated about writing about that part of my life.

Even the mistakes and the pain that you've caused and enacted upon you. That is definitely what I'm trying to capture

When I was a TV director working on Judd Apatow's show Undeclared. I was surrounded by so many young people. People like Seth Rogen, who was 9 years old or something. It was just a ridiculous amount of talented young people. I started to think I'd like to see a young-love movie, but not one done in that glossy, Hollywood, high-concept manner we've become accustomed to. One that was, for lack of a better way of putting it, a little more ambiguous, '70s-style, where everyone was flawed, middle-class characters.

I've been co-writing a TV thing with Bryan Cranston, which we are going to find out soon if it's moving forward or not which is for Amazon.