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.

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

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.

I lived on Thompson Street in SoHo for 13 years and I watched it go from a little Italian neighborhood to the Mall Of America. Then the obvious fact that it's pre-Internet, pre-cell phone. Everyone I think thinks their youth is a more innocent time. I just don't know.

[Keeping Up with the Joneses] is not one of those movies where people get shot and fall down and there's no reality of what would happen if you got shot and knocked over a motorcycle. It's meant to be a slight comedy in that sense.

I am very interested in the small decisions people make that do set you on a different road in your life. As much as we have influence over what kind of person we're going to become, there are little tests along the way.