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.

I had a lot of fun working with John Candy. We had a pretty good rapport.

I look for the meaning in what's funny, and I look for what's funny about things that are meaningful to me.

Some people have a fear of rejecting all the security that comes with family, church and state. They become fundamentalists.

If you're doing six takes, instead of doing six variations on the same words, why not just throw out the words and make them up as you go along, if you're comfortable with it? It gives the movies a slightly rangier feeling, and more of an accidental feel, but it also makes them edgier.

The cutting room is where you discover the optimal length of the movie.

At a certain point, you have to convince the actors that you've done the right thing. The way I work, if I can't convince them, I've got to move on. I can't coerce them or browbeat them.