When you grow up in Chicago, your whole family is counting on you to go to college and do something distinguished. The last thing you're thinking is that you're going to make a career in show business.

We tell our kids that policemen are good and God protects us and our country is noble, and at a certain point - and for some it comes quite early, five or six years old - we start to realize that it's all a facade.

Most comedy is not very ambitious. You probably can't name more than a handful of comedies that would qualify for Best Picture.

It's like the old rule-if you introduce a gun into the first act of a play, it's going to be used in the third act. So if you do a movie about criminals, you have to accept there's going to be Some action.

I think satire is a luxury of literate middle-class people. People who are well fed and relatively secure in their beds can laugh at their troubles. They can enjoy sitcoms. For those who aren't quite so lucky, well, the irony might be lost on them.

I'd like to think I'd never do a gratuitous fart joke.

The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.