Once you're alienated, you're on your own. That takes you to the world of the existential, where things just kind of float.

Parents tell us things to protect us, or they educate us from their own misinformation or misconceptions.

My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.

Find the most talented person in the room and if it's not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. try to be helpful.

That's one of the great things about DVD: In addition to reaching people who didn't catch the movie in theaters, you get to have this interaction of sorts.

Whenever a critic mentions the salary of an actor, I'm thinking, He's not talking about the movie.

I feel a big obligation to the audience, almost in a moral sense, to say something useful. If I'm going to spend a year of my life on these things, I want something that I feel that strongly about.