Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.

As much as I liked acting for its playfulness and the reward of hearing big laughs wash over you on a stage, I always felt I should do something that I could control.

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

Everyone has experienced laughing at a funeral, and not even inappropriately. It could be a response to a moment of absurdity or some fond memory. We're human beings so we understand that laughter and crying aren't always disparate emotions.

When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit.

I did a comedy with Al Franken about his character Stuart Smalley, which was really about alcoholism and addiction and codependency. It had some painful stuff in it. When we showed it to focus groups, some of them actually said, "If I want to see a dysfunctional family, I'll stay home."

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.